Aftershock
by roguetimechild
Summary: After being left at Bad Wolf Bay, Rose and the meta-crisis Doctor struggle to readjust.
1. 330 Minutes

Welcome to a first publicized attempt at Doctor Who fanfiction. Please enjoy your stay. Feel free to leave reviews on your way out.

No rights to Doctor Who.

BBC, and whatnot.

* * *

**Part 1: Resistance**

* * *

The thing about women being left on chilly Norwegian beaches after being present for the genocide of an alien fleet set on destroying reality with the man who committed said genocide and your own mum is that no one really knows what to address first.

Jackie Tyler, in classic Jackie-Tyler style, comes up with something first, and her utterance is what no one considered being the next words spoken between the three of them.

"Did you sprout any new organs when you lost one of your hearts?"

The Doctor peers over his shoulder at Jackie, standing far off behind him and Rose. Rose still looks straight on at the spot where the TARDIS had just dematerialized.

"Sorry?" the Doctor prompts.

"Are there any other human organs you were missing before?" she clarifies. "Maybe aliens only have one lung and four kidneys! Did you feel low on kidneys?"

"Mum," Rose says softly, still not looking back. Her voice is low and somber, yet has an air of lightness to it, like she doesn't know how to feel about just about anything.

"I ought to take care of transport and things," Jackie dismisses herself smoothly. "Good thing I brought a mobile, eh?"

The Doctor nods her off, and she turns to saunter off. She treks across the sandy expanse of Bad Wolf Bay and disappears behind a cluster of jagged rocks in the distance.

The Doctor faces forward again, glancing sidelong at Rose, who still looks perplexed.

"Okay?" he asks kindly.

"Fine," she replies blandly.

"That bad, eh?" the Doctor considers.

"I said fine."

"When someone actually is 'fine,' and is asked if they're okay or how they're doing, the response they think up usually isn't 'fine,'" the Doctor explains.

"Yeah, you've cracked it," Rose nods exaggeratedly. "I'm not fine. Give the man an award."

"Well, no need to be condescending," he pouts.

"Sorry," Rose sighs, glancing down at the ground before returning her gaze to the previous location of the TARDIS. "Long day."

"Tell me about it," the Doctor agrees. "I was just sprouted and lost most of my friends to their own lives in their own world."

He says it lightly, but it warrants a doe-eyed gaze from Rose, who finally looks away from the TARDIS dematerialization location and right at him. She holds his gaze for a while, then asks him quizzically, "Are _you_ okay?"

"Fine," he says without a thought, and Rose raises her eyebrows at the notion. The Doctor switches subjects quickly before this can be further examined. "Not meaning to rush you, Rose, but how long are we planning to stay here?"

"You can go," Rose dismissed him, lowing herself to the ground in a sitting position, "wait with mum if you want."

"Fat chance," he scoffs, peering down at her. "Give me a ballpark figure."

"Well . . ." Rose begins nervously, "I suppose you would remember if you have the same memories, right? Back when we were travelling with Mickey," her voice falters when she says the name, as if it pains her, "and we landed on that spaceship connected to France from the past—"

"Ah," the Doctor understands.

Rose trailed off. "Sorry if that, like, offends you or something."

"No," he replies. "It's fine."

The Doctor sits himself down next to Rose, prepared to wait with her, even if the original Doctor actually did end up returning for her.

And really, it's something he would absolutely consider doing.

* * *

Five and a half hours later, the TARDIS'd Doctor didn't show. The meta-crisis Doctor hopped to his feet, offering his hand down to Rose.

"Well, that three-hundred-thirty minutes," he announces.

Rose's face looks pained as she looks on at the still-vacant space before her. The scenery itself is rather dreary, grey and pale and cloudy, so sadness looms over the both of them like blanket. The Doctor is eager to leave. Frankly, so is Rose, but not in the same way.

Rose starts at the hand offered to her, as if just noticing it. She takes it cordially, and the Doctor hoists her to her feet.

"Off we go, then," he smiles encouragingly.

Rose forces something resembling a smile of her own, but she still seems just as dreary as their surroundings.

"Where's mum?" she asks.

"Took off that way," the Doctor nudges his head toward the rocks.

They start trudging off together, side by side. Rose's arms are crossed tightly to her chest.

"So do you still live with your mother, then?" the Doctor inquires, trying to drum up a nice conversation between the two of them.

"No," she replies, clearly trying to make an effort as well. "They got me a place closer to the Torchwood facility. It's decent, but nothing compared to a…"

She purses her lips, catching herself before she says the words.

_But nothing compared to a TARDIS._

"But, yeah, it's nice. My parents are rich now."

She says it so passively, like money doesn't mean all that much to her. The Doctor smiles to himself at the notion.

"Where will you be staying?" she asks suddenly.

"What?" the Doctor frowns, confused.

"I guess you could stay with Jackie and Pete until you get your bearings," she mused.

"_Get my bearings_?" the Doctor repeats.

"Well, yeah."

"Rose, I've been travelling space and time, or at least have the memories of it, and you expect to just buck up and get my bearings?"

"It's what I did!" Rose shoots back, a bit of resentment creeping into her voice. "What else are we supposed to do with you besides throw you out in the world and see how it works?"

"Some specifics were hinted at," the Doctor reminds her.

"Excuse me?"

"As far as you and I go, the intention was rather clear."

Rose brings them to a half, stopping to face him as she argues. "The Doctor does not have the authority to shove me with someone and expect me to fall head over heels for him because they know how to die!"

"You didn't seem to mind so much five and a half hours ago!" the Doctor countered, the same bitterness rising in his voice as well. "And, if we'd check the records, we'd see that you already developed somewhat of a fondness for me."

"That wasn't you!" Rose exclaims before she can stop herself.

"Rose, essentially, it was—"

"Let's not dive into the technicalities of it, please," she requests, beginning to trudge off again.

The Doctor trots after her, "Rose, in order to make this work, get a new perspective about it."

"_This_?" she echoes. "What exactly is _this _supposed to be?"

"Must I repeat the part about the clear intention?"

"I wish you wouldn't," she rolls her eyes.

"Rose," the Doctor says, almost as a reprimand. When she doesn't so much as look at him, keeping up her brisk pace, her shoes smashing into the sand, he tries again. "_Rose_."

Slightly fed up with the cold shoulder, the Doctor moves to step into her path, grabbing hold of her shoulders before she bumps into him.

"Rose Tyler, you listen to me," he demands, not rudely, but with an intensity that demanded to be heard.

Rose doesn't answer. Her lips a hard line and her jaw squared, but she seems to be listening.

"I know you don't understand the science of it, and frankly, there's less room in my brain, and I don't understand it entirely either. Maybe I was with you for those two years, maybe I wasn't and I sprung from that hand thing a few hours ago. You know what? Maybe this is all a very vivid dream. There's a surprising amount of theoretical guessing involved in space-time travel. Maybe we're not even in a parallel world and the TARDIS instead set its coordinates on a strikingly similar planetoid filled with humanoids that feed off—"

"The point, Doctor? If you don't mind," Rose suggests.

"The point is, no matter what I am, I still . . . I still love you and you still love him...me."

Rose bats his arms off of her shoulders. "That's presumptuous of you, isn't it? To tell me how I feel ?"

"You told me you did."

"I told _him_. And you just said neither of us grasp the science, so don't try to jump into it, alright? For all we know, you just have the memories and you actually are a few hours old."

"This all could be very simple, Rose," the Doctor informs her, getting very close to her face.

"Simple?" she scoffs. "Please, point out one part of this situation that is in any way simple."

"Fine," he accepted. "I lo—"

Rose groans, and pushes past him.

"Rose Tyler, were you always this difficult?" the Doctor calls after her.

"More so, trust me," a new voice chimes in.

Rose Tyler ambles over to stand beside her mother, seated on one of the smoother rocks situated on Darlig Ulv Stranden.

"Just in time, you two," Jackie grins broadly. "Torchwood should be along and minute. Take's them a bit to get their bearings, I suppose."

The Doctor and Rose did not bring up the poor word choice and let the previous conversation topic fizzle out.

"Torchwood?" the Doctor scrunches his eyebrows, moving toward the Tyler girls.

"Yeah," Rose informs him. "That's where I went to get _my _bearings, remember?"

"How's that going?" the Doctor asks, moving to stand beside her.

"I don't know if I still have a job," she realizes abruptly.

"Why not?"

"Torchwood was helping her get back to you . . . err . . . The Doctor," Jackie informed him. "They all assumed she'd stay there."

"Ohh," the Doctor muses. "Well, I assume they'd let you back in if you wanted. You must've been good at your job, right?"

"I was a bit . . ." she looks at him pointedly, ". . . difficult."

The Doctor chortles.

Just then, the sand at their feet begins to stir. They look skyward, where an aerodynamic-looking, dish-shaped object casts an oblong shadow on the beach shore as it eases toward them.

"Seriously," the Doctor groans. "A flying saucer?"

"You're the only one on the planet who wouldn't be impressed," Rose says. Her blonde hair twirled around itself in the wind the ship created.

"You don't seem impressed," the Doctor notices.

"I've seen ships that were bigger on the inside," she points out.

She begins to smile, but then she remembers how unlikely it is that she'd ever see that ship again.

And her smile falters.

The Doctor looks upon the expression shift sadly, wondering if she'd ever see her smile a big, shameless grin with him ever again, or if her memories would prevent her from doing so.


	2. Possessive and Regressive

Pete Tyler was waiting in the flying saucer, guiding the gang inside.

"Nice to see you again, Doctor," he had greeted.

"Meta-crisis Doctor," Rose corrected as she brushed past. "Real one's back home."

The Doctor looked dejected, but Rose didn't turn around to see it.

Now, they are seated side-by-side, Rose at the window and the Doctor beside, strapped into large, metal chairs with plush, red cushions that look all-business despite their surprising comfort level.

Rose spends most of the trip staring out the window and chewing her fingernails. The Doctor keeps glancing over at her, half-hoping she'd look back and half-hoping she wouldn't.

"How's Pete and Jackie?" the Doctor finally chalks up the nerve to ask.

"Fine. Married. Baby. Fine," Rose answered without breaking her gaze with the clouds.

"How's your new home?" he presses.

Rose drops her hand from her lips and folds them into her lap. "Nice little place. Well, it's not exactly little, actually. It's pretty nice. My parents are rich now, after all."

"Oh, that's nice."

"Yeah, I s'pose."

"Not to be forward," the Doctor begins, "but is there any reason you aren't looking at me?"

Rose hesitantly brings her face up to his.

"Give it to me straight, Rose, am I really that painfully hideous without the other heart?"

Rose chuckles lightly. "No, it's just weird still."

"What is?"

"If you had to guess?" she says. "Life, right now, is weird. Life ever since I met him."

"_Me_."

"You. Old you. Leather-jacket Doctor. Whatever."

Suddenly, and completely without warning, Rose sniffles.

The Doctor's eyes widen at her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, fine," Rose replies shortly. "And I mean that this time."

Rose is a crier and has been since the Doctor has known her, but she always bucked up and got herself together. Every single time. If he waits, it will pass. He is almost certain of it.

But he comforts her anyway, like a reflex.

"What's wrong?" he asks gingerly.

Rose wipes her nose with sleeve. "It's . . . it's been a long day."

"Tell me about it," the Doctor agrees. "I was just spawned."

Rose chokes out a chortle. "I didn't even get to say goodbye to Mickey. I thought I'd be able to see him again."

"Mickey doesn't need you," the Doctor tells her.

Rose shoots him a rather confused look.

"Yeah, I worded that wrong," he frowns at himself. "I mean . . . Mickey's fine. He's a big boy."

"Yeah, I'm sure he is," Rose agrees. "I guess I'm just a little selfish. I wish I could see him again, you know?"

"I know just how you feel," the Doctor mutters.

Rose looks up at the Doctor at the statement. They lock eyes, and don't say anything, don't smile or frown, for a long while.

* * *

The ship lands outside the Torchwood facility, where land transport was provided to the Doctor, Rose, and Jackie, with Pete doing the driving in a jeep that could brave mountainous terrains and stretches of desert, and therefore does satisfactorily on the paved streets.

"Is transportation always this slow?" the Doctor comments from the back seat across from Rose.

"It's not like we haven't _tried _building a TARDIS," Pete responds.

The Doctor scoffs at the notion. Rose lets out a small smile of her own at the ridiculousness.

"So Tony!" the Doctor pipes up in that cheery way of his. "Tony! The little boy! How is he? What's he like?"

"Oh, he's wonderful!" Jackie beams. "Knows how to throw a fit, though, just like his favorite sister."

Rose flushes, slumping into her seat.

"Doctor, not to be forward," Pete cuts in, "but do you have any plans for the future?"

The Doctor and Rose lock eyes again, but their gazes dart away quickly. "Why do you ask?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to join Torchwood in their work," he offers. "We could use a mind like yours."

The Doctor frowns. "I'm not really fond of repetitious, organized, routine . . . work. Or staplers. Staplers seem hazardous. Surely there's a safer way to attach papers to each other."

"Torchwood is hardly cubicle work," Pete explains. "It's quite nerve-racking, actually."

". . . I'll think about it, maybe."

Like Rose said, her house is near the Torchwood facility. It is a decent-sized place, wide and one story and several windows with the curtains decidedly closed.

"Here's where you two get out," Pete announces as the car comes to a halt.

"Actually," Rose begins nervously, "I thought he could stay with you two. Your house is bigger, after all. Lots more room. And he could meet Tony."

"If you say so, dear," Pete shrugs obligingly.

"Thanks," Rose smiles kindly, sliding out of car and trotting towards the door.

"Oh, and Rose!" Pete calls after her.

Rose turns back to them.

"I didn't tell you earlier," he begins, "and I know you wanted to make it back over there and all, but I'm so glad you're here instead."

Rose purses her lips together into a thin line. She nods as acknowledgment for the affection, but doesn't reply otherwise. She starts off toward her front door again.

"That's funny," Jackie muses. "I thought we'd have to pry her off of you to get you two separated."

The Doctor runs a hand through his messy hair and drags it down his face, a sign of perplexity that goes unnoticed as Pete drives toward his and Jackie's home.

"So Doctor, I must admit, I'm a bit confused," Pete calls back to him. "Why are you here instead of Rose being there? And where is your TARDIS? And what does meta-crisis even mean?"

The Doctor sighs.

"Long story."

* * *

~End of Chapter~

Would it be horrible if I asked you to please stick with me? I've got big plans, but I feel like I'm starting slow.

Anywho, thanks for reading and have a lovely day.


	3. Convergence and Recurrance

_Are. You. Serious, _she thinks aggressively.

At two in the morning, Rose's phone blares, demanding that she not attain that beauty sleep she so desperately desires.

Her hand flies out to her bedside table, searching blindly for her phone. Locating a lump, she slams down on what feels an awful lot like the answer button and drags the device to her ear.

"_What_?"

"Rose, could you please get to Torchwood?" Pete requests into her ear.

A long and rather masculine groan expresses her opinion on that.

"I know it's your first night back, so believe me when I say I wouldn't be calling if it wasn't urgent."

Still half-asleep, Rose suddenly catches onto the edge of urgency in his voice. She shoots up to a sitting position.

"What is it?"

"Not now," he says. "Meet me at Torchwood. I'm bringing the Doctor."

"Why?" she doesn't stop herself from asking.

"If anyone can help, it's the both of you."

He hangs up at this. Rose lowers the phone, sighs deeply, and then clambers out of the warmth of her bed. In thirty minutes, she's Torchwood-bound.

When she arrives, it's as dingy as usual. The Torchwood run by Yvonne Hartman Wharf had been well-lit and well-maintained. Pete seems to think that there are more pressing matters than cleanliness and that the occasional blown fuse is a matter to be dealt with later. Rose, personally, agrees, but the place is still dingier than she'd like.

Pete and the Doctor are waiting near the entry.

"Come on," Pete beckons with his head when he sees her.

Rose trots after him and falls into step behind, beside the Doctor.

"Place is due for a cleaning," the Doctor mutters out of the corner of his mouth.

"Tell me about it," Rose agrees.

"Oh!" the Doctor chirps, seeing a big, complicated thing, rounded, metal, and important-looking. There were a couple late-night works fiddling about with it. "What's that?"

"Dimensional cannon," Rose answers, not looking up at him.

"Right," he frowns, knowing its implications. "Does it still work?"

Rose thinks for a moment before deciding to answer him. "Depends how dissolved that walls between the starting point and destination are. We're still attempting to strengthen it."

"Still?"

"Yeah, I suppose we still are."

Of course she is, the Doctor thinks, slightly frustrated. She still wouldn't give up trying to get back to him. He decides a swift change in subject is an order.

"This place feels different," the Doctor notes.

"How do you mean?" Rose goes along gracefully with subject switch.

"The whole entire world," he clarifies. "It feels a bit askew, like there's something off about it."

"That may attribute to you being human now," she suggests. "I imagine that might feel different."

"I feel like it's more than that…" the Doctor ponders.

"Here we are," Pete announces, approaching what looked like a computer screen mounted onto a wall in a poorly-lit room. He pokes the screen a certain number of times with a certain amount of time between each tap, and it hums to life.

"Now, look," he says, jabbing at a bunch of prompts. "Torchwood runs surveillance in the immediate surrounding space around Earth. About a half hour ago, we caught wind of some time-space convergence occurring just at the edge of Earth's atmosphere." An image of a dark, starry view of space, probably where the convergence took place, flashes across the screen.

"Was it a vortex manipulator with enabled teleportation?" Rose asks, leaning into the picture before her.

The Doctor smiles absentmindedly at her quick reply, at how straight-up _smart _she was turning out to be.

"That's what I thought initially," Pete says, "but why would someone attempt to teleport at the edge of the atmosphere?"

"Maybe it's an alien," Rose suggests, "who, I don't know, sucks nitrogen out of otherworldly atmospheres."

"The thing is," Pete continues, tapping on more prompts. A bent grid appears across the sky, with a major dip in the middle, "I brought in you two for a reason. The TARDIS has been here a time or two. We've managed to record the effect the ship had on the surroundings. The ship leaves something of an imprint in the space it takes up. Molecules rearrange into a distinct pattern. This pattern fades over time, but for a while, it's there."

"What's your point?" Rose asks.

"The imprint left in the section this convergence was detected in was almost an exact match."

"Excuse me?" the Doctor chimed in, not sure he'd heard correctly. Perhaps he'd been busying himself admiring Rose a bit, not that he'd admit that.

Rose had gone stock-still, her eyes wide.

"He's saying . . ." Rose begins shakily. "He thinks that the TARDIS tried to land here."


	4. The Other Doctor

"But that's impossible," the Doctor decides firmly. He leans forward toward the screen and its curving lines. It's time like these where he would've donned his thick-rimmed glasses, but they were in the company of his strikingly similar friend who lived quite a distance away.

Was it possible this striking similar friend was attempting to return?

Being as the two of them thought similarly, the Doctor tried to place himself in the metaphorical shoes of the other Doctor. If he were to leave Rose again, would he try to return?

Trying to return and failing would be like losing her a third time, and that would be monumentally painful. After leaving her at Bad Wolf Bay the first time, he never tried again. He decides that the neither he nor the other Doctor would attempt such an endeavor. Not if he felt it was impossible.

And yet, here was the imprint in time and space.

"Is 'impossible' even in your vocabulary anymore?" Rose comments.

The Doctor does a quick overview of human psychology and biology in his head, because he is fairly certain that humans cannot read minds. Then, he recalls he had just said something earlier.

"Oh," he remembers. "I s'pose."

"What time was the fluctuation?" Rose asks Pete.

"About an hour before I phoned you," he tells her.

"Have there been any other fluctuations anywhere else since?"

"Not that I've been alerted of."

"Right," Rose accepts stoically. "I . . . give me a minute."

Suddenly, Rose turns on her heel and briskly walks out of the room. Pete and the Doctor stare after her, confused.

"Well, I suppose it's not usual she would want space for a minute," Pete considers.

The Doctor considers differently. "No," she says. "Rose isn't the 'space' type." With that, he trots after, and Pete has to stand around confused without anyone to exchange glances with.

The Doctor exits the room, not finding Rose anywhere in sight. He retraces his steps, hoping that he'd catch Rose on her way out of the building. He finds her standing with her arms crossed, back to him, staring down the dimension cannon.

The Doctor approaches her gingerly, not wanting to startle her or impose on whatever sensitive thoughts she may be lost in. He comes to stand beside her and goes to put a hand on the small of her back. Deciding against that, he hovers the hand over her shoulder for moment. Deciding against that as well, he eventually crosses his hands behind is back.

"Okay?" he asks calmly.

"Fine," Rose replies without looking at him, chewing on her fingernails.

"This is a nice cannon," the Doctor comments. "What year is it? I wouldn't expect this generation to have this sort of technology."

"Torchwood runs on a different timeline than everyone else," she jokes. "Not…not literally, though."

"Right, of course," the Doctor smirks. "When did you start building it?"

"The same day as Bad Wolf Bay. Part one."

"Well. You certainly didn't waste much time."

"I didn't have to do it," she says, "but I felt like I did. I felt stuck here. Just sitting at home eating chips felt counterproductive. Just sitting around monitoring timelines felt useless. I kept trying to get back. It felt wrong not to."

"I understand," the Doctor assures her.

"And then it worked," Rose reminisces, "and I thought _this is it. It's over_. But it wasn't. I kept coming up in the wrong places and wrong timelines and wrong worlds. It took me so long to find him."

Suddenly, she turns to him. "You know what?" she begins. "You would've just seen me if you'd turned around."

"What?"

"When you were on that vehicle crossing Midnight. We were able to send a projection through one of the screens a few seconds long. I was yelling at the back of your head. If you'd turned around, you would've seen me."

"Really?" the Doctor muses, recalling all the times he could remember of his back being turned to a screen.

Rose turns back to the cannon. "Yeah, that was frustrating. I saw Donna a few times, too."

The Doctor winces at the mention of Donna. It's a generally painful subject now, and not only because he wouldn't see her again. The Doctor knew that her having a new-and-improved brain wouldn't work for too long. Right now, he knew Donna must have been dead or living without memories of him. Both options were equally painful to consider. But he hoped that the other Doctor had shirked his sentimentality enough to rid her of the memories and send her back home where hopefully she'd live a life that'd satisfy her.

"And then I saw you…him…and again, I thought it was over," she recalls. "And then, you get shot."

"You had the gun," he reminds her. "You could have stopped it."

"It happened quickly!" she defends herself. "Besides, it worked out. And now you're here."

"So that's a good thing, is it?" he asks hopefully.

"I s'pose," she responds disappointingly. "You know the Doctor's mind, right? The other one's?"

"Quite well."

"Answer me this," she requests, looking up at him. "If you hadn't existed, would that Doctor have let me stay with him?"

The Doctor is taken aback by the frankness of the question, but he drums up an answers quickly. "Possibly," he admits, "but then again, you'd probably all be dead."

Rose purses her lips. "Fair point. Genocide aside, you did well out there."

"If I were ever to see the other Doctor again, he'd probably thank me for that genocide," he suggests. "He'd have a lot of monsters on his hands if I hadn't."

"The Doctor wouldn't thank you for genocide," Rose scoffs.

"Yeah, you're right," he sighs.

"Do you think that's him?" Rose asks him, falling comfortably into conversing with this Doctor, no matter the subject. "Do you think the Doctor's returning? Do you think maybe he already has?"

"I didn't think he would," the Doctor admits, "but if we disagree on matters such as genocide, we may have different opinions on trying to get back." The Doctor pauses before he poses his next question, "What if he did come back? What would you do?"

"I'd…" Rose thinks for moment, "I'd…I'd give him a hug. Maybe slap him for leaving me again, but in the friendliest way I could manage. Or maybe not. I guess the honest answer is that I don't know. What would you do?"

"Most likely stand off to the side as you do whatever you decide to do."

"Wow. You're six feet of awkward, aren't you?"

"I like to think I'm more like six feet of brilliant."

Rose laughs, and her smile does that lighting-up-a-room thing, and it's hard for the Doctor to do anything but smile and consider how glad he was to still be able to see her and talk to her, even if she decided that she didn't want anything more than that. Her face had changed in the time he'd been without her, and he was so grateful he'd get to see it continue to change and that he'd see her smile for longer than he thought he would and that he could still bring about a laugh in her. He would never stop being grateful for her. He'd changed the course of his very life.

Rose was grateful for the Doctor as well. She'd expressed this to her family and to Donna when they'd met up. They'd listened to how much the Doctor had changed her.

They'd been so huge in each other's lives. And no matter what happens past this minute, no rewriting of time could change that.

Well, supposedly, one could, but that would be one complex and probably paradoxical rewriting.

* * *

For the record, I kind of regret not putting this story in past tense.

Okay, I hope your day is nice and your harvest is fruitful...or something.


	5. Dead to the World

I had a bit of hard time trying to figure out how to start this chapter. But here it is. Hooray!

* * *

Pete enters and scurries up to Rose and the Doctor. They turn in towards each other as they hear the footsteps, bracing themselves for whatever it is this time.

"New developments," Pete announces once he reaches them.

"In the past ten minutes?" the Doctor questions.

"Yes," he confirms. "Another imprint has been reported, this time nearer to the ground."

He waits patiently for a reaction from either of them. He isn't picky. Shock. Hope. Outrage. But they give him two identically deadpan expressions.

"Give me a minute," Rose echoes from earlier, turning toward the exit.

"That's what you were doing," Pete frowns.

"Give me another one!" Rose exclaims, frustrated. "Or ten thousand. I'm going home." She's trudging towards the door, tense with whatever negative emotion is coursing through her.

"Home?" Pete frowns. "You don't want to track this development?"

"No!" she shrieks, whipping around, tears coming to her eyes, and something in her seems to break. "No, I don't! I'm tired, dad!"

The Doctor cuts in, stepping toward her. "Rose," he says gingerly.

Their eyes meet and Rose shoulders fall. She shakes her head at him minutely and finally parades out the door.

"_Now_, does she want space?" Pete wonders.

"No, not yet," the Doctor decides, trotting after her. She shoves the glass doors open and scuttles after Rose's retreating figure.

He pushes out the door and enters the chilly night air. It must be nearly morning by the point, but the sun still hasn't shown itself.

"Rose!" he calls.

She doesn't reply, but she doesn't yell at him to buzz off. He falls into step beside her.

"What is it?" he prompts.

"If this conversation continues," she huffs, still walking briskly, "I am about to do a lot of complaining. Are you prepared for that?"

"Go for it," the Doctor accepts.

Rose halts, and the Doctor stumbles slightly beside her. She turns to face him, takes a deep breath, and goes off.

"I'm tired," she repeats. "I am so unbelievably, agonizingly, staggeringly tired."

"Yeah, okay," the Doctor responds eloquently, but then he takes a good look at her. The whites of her eyes are startlingly bloodshot, her face is sallow, and bags are present under her eyes.

"I've been trying to rip through time and space for years. Years. There hasn't been much time for sleep. I did all of it in the hope that I'd find the Doctor again. And I do. And I help him save the universe. And then he drops me off back home. We get separated, I build a dimensional cannon, I land in so many wrong places, I guide Donna back to her original timeline, I track him and watch him get shot, everything turns out okay, and then drops me back home without asking me how I feel about it." Tears are brimming in her eyes again. This has bothered her. It really has.

"He was trying to do what was best," the Doctor reminds her, feeling compelled to defend the guy.

"Yeah, that sounds like him," she agrees a little bitterly. "He doesn't _always _know what's best, you know."

A tear finally falls.

"You're not okay," the Doctor notes.

"I'm not okay," she agrees with a desperate, breathy laugh.

"Let's get you home," he suggests.

"Let's get me home," she agrees with the same humorless mirth.

Rose faces front again, heaving a heavy, resigned sigh. The Doctor places a hand on the small of her back as she begins to walk again, and Rose finds herself tremendously comforted by the gesture.

She leads the way to her house, the Doctor watching her closely to make sure she doesn't keel over. Occasionally, when she looks particularly exhausted, the Doctor would grip her shoulder or touch her arm gently. She would shoot him a grateful smile, he'd return one of his own, and they'd keep walking all the way to her house.

"You can stay here," Rose tells him as they reach her doorstep. "I'm not going to make you walk to mum and dad's at this hour."

"Thanks."

Rose fishes keys out of her pocket and attempts unlock the door. In her tired stupor, she has quite a bit of trouble. Noticing her distress, he gently places his hands over hers, taking over the key duties. Rose slides her hands out of his, giving him another thankful smile. The Doctor opens the door with more ease and Rose stumbles inside.

"I'm going to sleep," Rose announces, as if he needed any hint to that. "Find a piece of furniture and sleep on it."

Rose stomps into her room and collapses onto the bed without bothering to change her clothes. The Doctor watches her go, chuckling slightly at her ungraceful descent onto the mattress.

The house is goes quiet. The Doctor stares around the room, examining Rose's house. It's exceedingly normal, and he thinks of no better adjective to describe it. He meanders to the kitchen, examining all the normal kitchen-y things. Pans. Stove. Refrigerator. How quaint.

The Doctor makes his way to the dining room, which consists of a round wooden table with papers strewn about on top of it. It's a bunch of science-y time-and-space stuff that he understands rather easily. Coffee rings decorate many of the papers and the Doctor wonders exactly how long it has been since Rose has slept.

He checks on her one more time—she hasn't moved an inch—before finding a guest bedroom. Also normal. He's quite tired himself. It's been a long day, though he isn't sure whether it's been a good one or bad one.

He lies down and attempts to fall asleep before grief over losing the TARDIS sets in.

He focuses on other things, and he is happy.

This is universe feels different, he reflects before sleep finally overtakes him.


	6. Familiar Voices

It's rather short, but I wanted to end it where it ended. Have fun.

I really enjoy writing this. I haven't been this stoked about a fic in a while. (Do people still say stoked?) Now, how do I beg for reviews without sounding like I'm begging for reviews?

Thanks for your reviews so far. What lovely people you are.

Oh, and merry Christmas.

* * *

Morning comes as it tends to with no regard to how much rest one wanted or whatever life-changing events occurred the previous day. It comes and rushes you along to the next tribulation. The Doctor, however, embraces it as he embraces many days: with a startling positivity and hopeful outlook toward the future. Some days, it's harder to do than others, this being one of them, but there are worse places to wake up in the universe than Rose Tyler's house.

The Doctor wakes before her. Upon checking on her, he learns she's barely moved since he last saw her. He chortles to himself, then ambles back to the kitchen, and doesn't know what to do from there. What does one do when there is no disaster to avert or civilization to explore?

He suddenly feels constricted. Stuck in city on one planet in one galaxy in one time period. But this city/planet/galaxy/time period has Rose Tyler. It could be worse.

The Doctor proceeds to spend a good ten minutes wondering whether it is appropriate for him to cook something.

Rose awakes with a start, bolting up to a sitting position, breathing heavily. The Doctor turns on the balls of his feet at the noise, still out of Rose's line of vision.

"Mum?" Rose calls, hearing the small rub of his shoes against the flooring.

The Doctor opens his mouth to reply, but she cuts him off.

"Oh, mum, I had this awful dream," she begins, standing from the bed and beginning to smooth down the blankets. "I'd made it back to the Doctor's universe, which is fine and good. _Great,_ actually. But then he just dropped me off back here with some weird clone of him."

The Doctor closes his mouth, pursing his lips tightly as she goes on and on with the "dream."

"And then, he just leaves. He just leaves me on the _same beach_."

She begins to walk toward the kitchen, and stops dead once she reaches the entry.

"Oh!" she gasps.

"Yeah."

A silence falls between them. Rose goes red in embarrassment.

"Uhh…you're not just a weird clone," Rose assures him.

"You're utterly convincing," the Doctor comments.

She smiles sheepishly. It's adorable.

"I'm still quite insulted. I expect thorough apologizing. Good looks and charm won't get you out of this one."

Rose giggles. "You sound like Donna."

The Doctor gulps. "Oh, do I?"

He doesn't want to talk of Donna. Or think about the part of her voice he's inherited, since that might lead to more thinking of the tragedy that was and is Donna.

"Okay," Rose sighs. "Not a dream. That's fine. Early morning confusion. Let's get past it. How'd you sleep?"

"Awfully," he admits with a scowl.

"Too bad for you. I slept like the dead," she brushes past him to the kitchen counter and starts rummaging through the cupboards. "Coffee?"

His scowl deepens. Rose doesn't see it, her back turned to him, but deciphers his silence.

"Come on. You don't live off moon powder and star juice, or whatever."

"And I definitely don't live off coffee," he adds.

Rose eventually finds something the Doctor would consume, generic breakfast-y things, and sets it out on the round, wooden dining table. They sit opposite each other, leaning their elbows on the surface.

"Well, this is all terribly normal, isn't it?" Rose comments over her coffee mug. "How are you holding up?"

"Alright, I s'pose," he replies, not dwelling too much on it. "And you?"

"Same as you, I guess," she shrugs.

"So fill me in," the Doctor prompts, leaning back in his quaint, little wooden chair, "how's it been for you since the first time on that beach?"

"Busy," she replies. "Awfully busy."

"Dimension cannon, I presume?"

"Yeah, that," she nods, "and a grand queue of looming threats out there. This country is brimming by cybermen, you know."

"Right," the Doctor recalls. "That sounds fun."

"You wanna know a secret?" Rose begins, leaning back in her own chair. "Fighting off monsters is pretty much only fun with you."

* * *

"FIGHTING OFF MONSTERS ISN'T ANY FUN WITH YOU!" Rory yells.

"I DIDN'T MEAN FOR THIS TO HAPPEN!" the Doctor defends himself feebly.

The Doctor, Amy, and Rory cling to whatever they can get their hands on as a turbulence they've never experienced before shakes their questionably reliable transport.

"You said we lost them!" Amy shrieks as she's thrown against the controls.

"I don't think this is them!" the Doctor says. They're in the time vortex. Without proper equipment, how could a dalek have followed them? "Perhaps we've hit a pothole. In time."

"_What_?" Rory exclaims, frustrated.

Suddenly, the TARDIS slams them all to the ground as it lands roughly. They lie in heaps on the floor, groaning at the situation.

"Where are we?" Amy moans from the floor.


	7. Save the Cybermen

Happy New Year.

Pretty soon we'll be dead.

* * *

The Doctor shifts in his chair. A look of discomfort crosses his face.

"You alright?" Rose asks.

"Yeah," he grumbles, shifting his weight. "It's just…I don't know, something about this place."

"This universe feels different," she recalls him mentioning.

"Maybe it's the one heart thing," he muses. "I'm still not used to that. I just woke up, and I'm already exhausted."

"Well, you said you didn't sleep well," Rose remembers. "What kept you from deep, peaceful slumber?"

Where to begin?

"Oh, just thinking," he tries to dismiss the subject swiftly.

"About?"

"This and that."

She raises an eyebrow at him. He's not getting away with that. Rose knows him too well.

The Doctor fiddles with his fork for a moment. "You did very well with the cooking."

"Doctor."

"I didn't know you could cook."

"_Doctor_," Rose repeats somehow more forcefully and more gently at the same time.

The Doctor sighs deeply. There's a heavy silence between the pair as they exchange glances across the table. The quiet goes on for so long, Rose wonders if the Doctor remembers the questions. But eventually, under his breath, so low she has to strain to hear, the Doctor mutters, "They're gone."

"Sorry?"

"They're gone," he says, louder, clearer, a tad sadder.

"Who?"

"All the people—and aliens—I've ever known and so many people I could have," he clarifies. "Takes its toll, I guess."

"Tell me about it," Rose chortles, recalling her initial entrapment here and the hopeless feeling of it. It wasn't entirely hopeless, of course. As long as she was alive, hope could be found.

"Yours was different," the Doctor points out. "You had Pete and Jackie and Mickey."

Without thinking about it, she responds, "Hey, you have me."

The Doctor smiles at this. "Yeah."

She smiles back, initially back at him, then down at her coffee mug.

"I miss my ship, though," the Doctor pouts. "He'd better be taking good care of it."

"Well, if anyone would…" Rose chuckles.

"I could have had a fantastic life over there. You better be worth it," the Doctor points at her, mock threatening.

"What? Worth your whole life?"

She laughs off the thought.

She still didn't know. She still wasn't aware she was worth that and more to him.

* * *

"It _looks _like home," Amy observes, leaning down to examine a shrub, because maybe shrubs give distinctive clues about planets and civilians.

"Looks can be deceiving," the Doctor tells her, looking up to the sky.

"Very true," Rory agrees. "When I first met Amy, I thought she looked sweet."

Amy snaps her head around to shoot a glare at her husband. He shrugs innocently, and then occupies himself with observing shrubs of his own.

"This place feels different," the Doctor muses, hopping up and down on the concrete. The place looks very earthly, with geometric architecture and controlled plant growth prettying up the place.

"Different how?" Amy asks, running a hand down a leaf.

He frowns at the sky. "Not bad, different, but not good, different."

"Well, it looks like we're still on earth," Rory concludes.

"Hey, I've seen these!" Amy exclaims.

The Doctor and Rory turn to face her. She's studying a poster pasted to the brick wall of some coffee shop. The pair comes to join her on either side.

"Oh, no," the Doctor mutters.

"What? Is this bad?" Amy asks.

Rory follows, "Do you know where we are?"

The Doctor hesitates. He reads the poster over a few times, just to make sure.

The poster depicts a vaguely man-shaped robot, expressionless and made of steel. The figure is a wreck, with arm parts and leg parts heaped into a pile and detached head tilted to the side. The poster attempts to garner sympathy. Dismemberment tends to do that.

Above the illustration, the poster reads, "SAVE THE CYBERMEN!"

There's a bunch of fine print under the rendering. A bunch of very detailed logic pleading that cybermen are sentient being, may as well be human, and logic and science that made sense if one thought on it too long. It went on to antagonize an organization, Torchwood, which wanted to eradicate the race. The poster made them seem heartless and cruel.

"Doctor," Rory repeats. "Do you know where we are?"

The Doctor answers calmly, not betraying anything with his voice, "I hope not."

* * *

"You know, after Bad Wolf Bay, I didn't think I could feel more sorry for you," the Doctor comments through the door.

"It's not nearly as bad," Rose assures him, wrapping herself in the towel.

"I find that hard to believe," he groans.

Rose has just gotten done showering, and the Doctor, not knowing what one's supposed to do while waiting other than hop forward in time, merely waits in her room. Somewhere along the way, a friendly, though-the-door conversation started.

"This would be a lot easier if you had an open mind," Rose calls to him.

The bathroom connects to Rose's bedroom. The Doctor picks around at some of Rose's things as he talks.

"I consider myself an optimist, Rose," the Doctor says. "The thought of a nine-to-five job just isn't one of the things I dwell on to supply myself with hope."

"It's more than a nine-to-five job," Rose tells him, running a new towel through her hair. Her roots are showing, she notices. They've been showing a while, but only now does it strike her to care. "You'd like a lot of the work we do there. Lots of life-threatening nonsense that you'd be into."

"It's not the almost-dying that made my life exciting," the Doctor points out, running his gaze across a bunch of framed pictures on her bedside table, all of them seeming to depict her family and Mickey. "It's the new experiences, the lack of security, the people you meet who make you look at the world differently." He absentmindedly slides open a drawer beneath the framed pictures.

"In Torchwood, you meet people, experience new things, and the lack of security…well, we don't have dental insurance."

"Living on the edge, you are," the Doctor murmurs.

Rose rolls her eyes, chuckling, then starts collecting her clothes of the counter.

The Doctor peers into the open drawer, not really considering this might be an invasion of privacy. He feels almost at home here. Almost. It's no TARDIS.

* * *

"Doctor, where are we going?" Amy trots after him.

"Back home," he replies brusquely.

"So we're not home now?" Rory asks, keeping pace. "This isn't earth?"

The Doctor wrings his hands. "Have you two always asked so many questions?"

"Doctor, why won't you tell us where we are?" Amy asks, furthering his point.

"I'm not sure. I'm not sure, okay?"

"Then why are you all tense and high-strung?" Rory questions.

He stops and spins on his heels, causing Amy and Rory to jerk to a halt. "_I AM NOT HIGH-STRUNG!"_

* * *

The Doctor peruses the papers in Rose's bedside drawer. More science-y papers. Geez, even in bed she was looking over research. For some reason, he finds himself feeling disappointed. What was he expecting to find in here? Sentimental pictures of him? How would she even have those?

A slim, expensive-looking phone starts buzzing atop the bedside table.

"Rose, your phone's ringing," the Doctor alerts her. Reading the caller ID, he adds, "It's Torchwood."

"Answer it, will you?" Rose requests. "Tell dad I'm getting ready."

The Doctor brings the phone to his ear. "She's getting ready."

"Ah, Doctor!" Pete greets. "You didn't come to our house last night, so I hoped you'd stopped off at Rose's. Wouldn't want you getting lost, now."

"Yep. Safe and sound," the Doctor confirms.

"Anyways, can you and Rose come down here straight away?"

"She's getting ready," the Doctor repeats. He suddenly realizes how quietly Pete is talking.

"Yes, I heard," Pete whispers. "Please, hurry her along."

The Doctor grows serious. "Pete, what is it? Are you in danger?"

"Hurry."

"_Hey!" _a loud, rough voice barks at them. "_Is that a phone?!"_

A click on the other end.

"_Rose_!" The Doctor exclaims.


	8. Wonderful Things

The ship is uncomfortably quiet. There is no troublesome cry of engines or concerning spark shower from a button wrongly pressed, but merely the Doctor's labored breathing and vocalized frustrations.

"No, girl, come on!" the eleventh Doctor cries, pulling roughly at various levers. "Come on, if there's a way in, there must be a way out!"

His machine stays dormant, doesn't respond.

"What's wrong with it?" Amy leans forward to inquire. She and Rory stand off to the side of the glass-floored control panel area, watching the Doctor fiddle with his machine, running desperate laps around the console.

"She's unfamiliar with the power source," the Doctor grumbles, smashing a considerably risky button he hadn't touched in years.

"So you haven't been here before?" Rory guesses. Amy completes his thought.

"Doctor, where are we?"

"Why do you keep asking that!?" the Doctor wrings his hands in the air.

"It's sort of a common concern," Rory explains sardonically.

"I am not up for attitude today!" the Doctor points to the pair of them frantically. "Not yours, not hers, and not even _hers_."

"Hers?" Amy echoes, confused.

"Yes, Pond, it's the identifying pronoun of your gender," the Doctor responds busily.

"You said it twice," Amy points out, "but I'm the only girl here."

The Doctor meets her thoughtful gaze with a somber one, pausing in his control jostling.

"Doctor," she says, exemplifying his concern for him with her tone and expression, "do you know where we are?"

He drops his gaze. He listlessly pulls down on a lever he's already tried six different times.

"Where?" Amy prods.

The Doctor meanders over to the chair beside the console and lowers himself into it. He leans forward, resting his knees on his elbows. The Ponds are to his left, and his straightforward gaze at the console barely brushes them in his peripheral.

"Doctor, where?" Amy pushes. "And who's here that you're so afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of her," the Doctor corrects her simply, still not facing her. He folds his hands into his lap and plays with his thumbs.

"Then why are you so frantic to avoid her entire civilization?" Rory wonders.

The Doctor takes a deep, measured breath through his lips. What's the harm in telling them, he decides.

"I don't think this is your world."

* * *

The Doctor and Rose jog briskly toward Torchwood, such a short trip this morning, such a seemingly endless endeavor now. They keep up with each other easily enough that they can talk as they run.

"Did he say who was there?" Rose interrogates. Her still-wet hair extends around her head, lays against her neck, starting to bunch into waves, leaving water spots on the jacket she'd donned in the hurry she had been in, the same blue jacket she'd had on the previous day.

"No," the Doctor answers.

"Did you hear them talk?"

"Yes."

"Well?"

"Male, adult, angry."

"Motive?"

"Don't know."

The building is in sight, looming in the distance. It seems quiet and, despite the cliché, _too quiet ._They slow down as they approach the entrance, their shoes _k__lop!_-ing against the ground. Their breaths are short and heavy from nerves and exertion. Rose leans over and puts her hands on her knees in attempt to collect herself. The Doctor places a hand on her shoulder as he pulls his own self together.

"Alright," Rose straightens up, and the hand falls back to his side. "If dad called from a Torchwood line, then he probably used one of the Torchwood phones, meaning he's probably somewhere on the first floor. It's the only floor with outgoing phone lines."

The Doctor takes up her thinking smoothly. "Whoever's in there probably got through this front door."

"Yeah, and if he's human, he's probably watching this door like a hawk to see if anyone barges in."

"If he's not human," the Doctor adds, "he's probably keeping a closer eye on everything else. Except doors and windows."

Rose nods, not even pausing to relish the weirdness. "Well, then where do we go in?"

The Doctor scans the building with a steady gaze. His face is serious, wrinkles forming between the eyebrows as he thinks under these new, one-hearted circumstances.

"I don't know," he admits with some difficulty.

"That's new," Rose replies with more amusement than resentment. "Charge in with guns in the air, then? Figurative guns, of course," she adds for his sake.

"I s'pose so," he concedes.

Rose doesn't waste much time, pushing through the glass doors and barging into Torchwood. The bleak, sterile walls resembling that of a hospital are a shock to the senses. The Doctor keeps on her heels.

They stop within seconds as it become clear that the emergence is occurring right near the entrance.

"_Stop_!" an unfamiliar voice demands.

The Doctor and Rose dive for the floor as a beam of light buzzes toward them. They crouch behind a table, laid onto its side either from general disarray of the place or being knocked over from some sort of preceding, emergency-related carelessness.

"Rose, I didn't mean for you to _come here_!" a more familiar voice scolds.

Rose peeks over the table and, across the floor behind a desk standing the right side up crouches Pete Tyler, looking terribly distressed.

"What did you expect?!" she asks sharply.

"You to _get help!_"

"Who'd you expect to help you?!"

"Rose," the Doctor warns softly. She doesn't waste time looking for the threat he's getting her attention for and ducks behind the table just as a beam illuminates above her, piercing the air where her head had been.

* * *

"Rose Tyler," Amy repeats, testing the sound of the name.

The Doctor tries not to wince at the sound of the name. He's said it numerous time in his brief recount of his time with her, but is strange to hear the name again from elsewhere. "Yeah."

"You think this is where she is?" Rory asks for clarification.

"Cybermen propaganda posters, sudden power loss after excessive turbulence, the fact that this seems to happen impossibly often. Yeah, it seems so."

Amy gazes at the Doctor's morose expression, and it confuses her. "And why is that bad?"

The Doctor meets her gaze, and it intensifies in nearly every respect: the sadness, the anger, the gladness; all magnified. "Have you ever lost something, Pond? Something wonderful?"

Amy and Rory exchange glances at precisely the same moment and instinctively move a little towards each other.

"It's awful, is it not? A dreadful, sinking feeling. It's not hopeless. Nothing in these worlds ever is. But it feels that way, does it not?"

Amy clenches her jaw, then nods.

"And did it ever come back to you?"

This time, when the Ponds glance each other, the gaze lingers. Amy's recalls the dream state she'd been in, believing she'd lost Rory to a pile of ashes.

"And then, did you ever_ let_ it leave you again, never having it return to you?"

This time, the Ponds don't look at each other. Rory finds himself urged to hold Amy's hand, but he resists.

"Imagine that, won't you?" he requests. "Imagine losing a very wonderful thing. Twice. And imagine it was the selfless thing to do. The altruistic decision. The hero's decision. But the hero loses the wonderful thing. Then, imagine being dropped into a place where that wonderful thing exists." He drops his gaze, twiddling his thumbs some more.

"Go to her," Amy decides firmly. "Go find Rose."

"It's not the simple, Pond," the Doctor spits.

"What are you, in middle school? Find her."

The Doctor stands to tower over Amy, scowling. "I left her for good. She has the version of me that she prefers."

"Is that it?" Amy counters, unfazed by his proximity. "Do you think she won't want you anymore because this isn't the version of you she knows?"

"No. She has a human clone of me. I don't care whether she likes me or not."

"That's utter nonsense," Amy calls him out brutally. "If you don't care what she thinks of you, go find her."

"Pond," the Doctor says, "she's supposed to be happy here."

"What, you think you're a walking pillar of sadness?" Amy challenges. "You don't just bring misery and woe wherever you go!"

"You're yelling at me!"

"You're yelling at _me_!"

"I'm allowed to yell. I'm winning this argument."

"_I'm _allowed to yell. I'm _Scottish_!"

"If I may!" Rory cuts it as politely as he can manage.

"_What?!" _the feuding pair yells together.

"Doctor," Rory begins, gesturing with his finger, "just so we're clear, you're not visiting this Tyler girl because you think it will somehow upset her?"

"I would've said it much more cleverly and in a way that didn't sound so simple, but essentially, I suppose."

"Alright," Rory nods, "but may I add, while you have helped add stress and anguish to my life, I'm not sad."

The Doctor doesn't see where he's going. "Alright?"

"In fact, I'd say I'm more-or-less content. Happy, even. For the moment."

"Thank you for the update, Rory."

"I have a point," he foreshadows. "And that is: Rose Tyler's happiness is not defined by your role in her life. You might upset her, sure. Maybe she'll lament your fashion choices and get mad at you for leaving her again, but chances are, she's had time, and she's okay. You do not define her happiness."

Amy smiles at him.

"Or, she could be dead, and you have nothing to worry about regardless."

Amy's face falls. She begins to morph her face into one of disappointment at Rory's bleak logic. Then, she thinks of something.

"Why are we here?" she asks suddenly.

The Doctor, turning over Rory's words, is confused by the question. "Sorry?"

She repeats the question.

"It was accidental, Pond. We aren't meant to end up here."

"But what if we are," her face lights up with the idea.

"What?" Rory frowns.

"You know how some people are late for work sometimes and it turns out that their workplace catches on fire or something? Or when people take a college class they have no interest in and it shapes their whole career?"

"_What_?" Rory repeats.

"Wait," the Doctor says skeptically, "Amy, are you implying destiny? Outside influence? Divine intervention?"

"Why not?" she throws up her hands. "What if you're here for a reason?"

"And what might that be?"

"How should I know? I'm not your Divine Interferer."

"Amy, I'm not supposed to be here," he pronounces firmly.

"Doctor, how many _wonderful things_ have you come across by ending up the places you thought you were supposed to be?"

"Was that word choice deliberate?" the Doctor queries.

"Maybe a little."

He turns away from her. "Pond, why should I risk messing with her head and affecting her life the way I tend to do with people?"

"What if you'll affect it for the better?" Amy counters. "What if she's been pining for closure? What if she's about to marry that clone thing and wishes you were here to take serve as her maid…man…of honor? What if she's in imminent danger in a life-or-death situation?"

* * *

Rose flinches as the table shakes and rattles, absorbing another shot.

"Guns," the Doctor scoffs.


	9. Sentiment and Sacrifice

Wow, I really feel like I should have stuck the first part of this chapter at the end of the last chapter and had a more effective cliffhanger, so after you come across the first break line, please take a moment to…wallow in suspense? After the break, there's no time jump or switch of perspective, but I really want a beat to be taken there. If this was a show, that's where'd I'd probably want to put the commercial. Ya got me?

Thanks for reading/reviewing!

* * *

More of what were presumably laser blasts jostle the table, and its bottom digs into Rose's arm. The Doctor, facing her, wears an expression of fierce concern accompanied by intense confusion.

"Did you get a good look at who it was?" Rose asks him.

"I thought I did," he replies, ducking instinctively as a beam blazes over his head.

"What'd it look like?"

"I don't think I got a good look," the Doctor scowls at the memory of the figure he'd seen just before ducking under the table.

Rose maneuvers herself onto her knees and braces herself. She executes a silent prayer in her mind, and then grips the edge of the table, preparing to lift herself up. She's about to lift her gaze when a voice booms across from her.

"Rose Tyler," the threat calls.

Rose frowns at the sound of the voice. It's familiar, but metered and robotic.

The Doctor's face goes tight when he hears the voice. He recognizes the tremor of it as well.

"Who's askin'?" Rose challenges.

"You will rise."

"Fat chance," she scoffs.

"We have apprehended Pete Tyler. Rise, or he dies."

The Doctor and Rose exchange wide-eyed looks. The Doctor immediately tries to talk her down.

"Rose, it could be lying," he points out.

"Yeah, but he could _not _be."

Rose gets a grip on the edge of table and lifts herself to her feet. She's prepared to meet the threat's eyes with stoic grace and perhaps a dash of sass, but when she sees the enemy, her face blanches.

She immediately whips her head down to make sure the Doctor is still crouched beside her, then double takes back to stare at the bellowing rival.

Meeting her gaze levelly is the Doctor.

* * *

The sight of the Doctor renders Rose speechless and utterly perplexed. In front of her, in the brown pinstriped suit she remembers with surprising clarity, the Doctor from her memory stands before her.

Pete's talk about the imprints in space implying the Doctor's attempted visit come to her mind with hesitation.

"Rose Tyler," the pinstriped Doctor identifies her.

She manages to part her lips, and a measly reply falls out of them, "Yeah."

The Doctor beside her rises to join her. From her reaction, he can tell she's seen what he thought he'd observed mistakenly.

"Your time is up," the threat announces.

"Sorry, what?" Rose shakes her head, startled and confused, barely hearing him.

Suddenly, the being drops its jaw and a blue light erupts from between its teeth. Pulling Rose from her shock, the Doctor grabs her by the shoulders and pulls her to a crouch, the beam barely missing the pair of them.

"Who are you?" the Doctor shouts over the table at his doppelgänger.

"I am the Teselecta," it pronounces in its metered monotone. "You are the Doctor and Rose Tyler."

"And why does that mean you have to kill us, exactly?"

"You are wanted for crimes against this planet. Your punishment is death."

"Crimes? What crimes?! Who are you?!" the Doctor demands to know.

"Rise."

"No."

"Rise, Doctor and Rose Tyler."

"_No_."

"Rise, or Pete Tyler dies."

Rose straightens up at the notion and pushes herself off the ground. The Doctor, rolling his eyes at how easily she's won, rises to join her.

"So you're not the Doctor?" Rose asks.

"No, but we are human. Humans guide this figure from inside."

The Doctor glances sidelong at the small, but noticeable disappointment that manifests in Rose's features, her shoulders sagging slightly.

"Then why do ya look like 'im?" she asks, her voice becoming very small.

"To locate you. We planned to take the likeness of the Doctor to find you and to take the likeness of Rose Tyler to find the Doctor."

"Why?"

"To eliminate you."

"_Why_?"

"Crimes against humanity."

"What crimes against humanity!?" Rose presses, frustrated.

"Crimes yet to have been committed."

The Doctor and Rose exchange looks and take a long while to consider what could possibly lay in their future. What is so despicable that a group of mercenaries would want to kill them before it occurred?

"You will now die."

The Doctor and Rose brace themselves to react accordingly, but then the Teselecta speaks.

"Surrender, or Pete dies."

The Doctor's heart clenches, because he knows Rose will readily sacrifice herself for another. He opens his mouth to shout something desperate at Pete when a rather peculiar piece of information comes to his attention.

"Pete's not here," he notices.

Rose scans the room around her and draws the same conclusion. "Where is he?" she demands of the robot shape in front of her. "What have you done with him?"

"He is inside," the Teselecta reveals. "He was shrunken and allowed entry into the Teselecta, where he will be eliminated unless you both surrender."

Rose clenches her jaw, exhales deeply, and steps over the table. The Doctor, knowing the decision she's come to, reaches for her shoulder.

"Rose, _don't_."

"I'm not letting him die," Rose shrugs the hand off of her.

"Rose, this isn't what he'd want."

"I don't care."

The Doctor, desperate, steps over the table and strides after her determined figure.

"Rose, _please_."

"Teselecta!" she shouts, ignoring the Doctor's pleas. "If you're going to kill me, answer me something."

The pinstriped figure waits, presumably listens.

"Whatever it is you think the Doctor and I will do in the future, we do it together, right?"

"Correct," it answers.

"Without me in the equation, we can't do it together. Kill me, fine, but spare the Doctor's life."

"Rose, _no_!" the Doctor bellows, yanking at her arms, which Rose lurches away from him.

The Teselecta is silent for a while, and the men orchestrating its decisions are probably debating inside. Eventually, the mouth of the figure parts, and its robot voice says, "Agreed."

"_Rose_," the Doctor puts himself between the Teselecta doppelgänger and Rose, who finally meets his gaze. Tears are brimming in her eyes as she awaits her death. The Doctor grips her shoulders tightly. He makes his voice quiet and serious, and it shakes with the effort. "Rose, I'm begging you, I'm _begging _you, please don't do this."

"Should I let them kill you both instead?" she says, her voice cracking, her tears spilling.

"Who's to say it won't kill Pete and me anyway?" the Doctor raises the question.

"We promise to honor our word," the Teselecta assures him.

Rose lets a humorless laugh escape her. "Besides," she says, her voice breathy, "whatever crime against humanity we're supposed to commit, it's best if we don't commit it."

The Doctor's stoic exterior crumbles, and his face is a picture of despair. More tears spill down Rose's face, and she drops her gaze, looks towards their shoes. The Doctor's hands slide to her neck, and his fingers entangle themselves in the hair just above there. His own gaze drops, and their foreheads touch. They're both so sad, so very sad, yet somehow, the presence of each other strengthens the both of them.

"I never got to say it again," The Doctor begins. "Rose, I lo—"

Rose quickly lifts her hand to the back of the Doctor's neck and guides him into a kiss, cutting off his sentiment. Rose doesn't want to hear it now. If she does hear it, she'll back down. She knows she will. And so she kisses him instead, for the first time since Bad Wolf Bay redux. If she had been able to kiss the Doctor during their first encounter at Bad Wolf Bay, the other time his sentiment was interrupted, this is what she imagines it would've felt like. Drawing sadness and pain from each other, yet drawing joy and hope from each; so reminiscent, yet so future-focused; so quick, yet so lingering.

And also, tongue.

The Teselecta waits silently and patiently during the exchange, proving that human beings were actually running that thing.

They finally part, Rose's hands on the sides of the Doctor's face, her fingertips grazing the hair on the back of his neck, The Doctor's hands attempting the memorize the feeling of her blonde hair.

"Look after my family," Rose asks through the bubble in her throat.

He nods against her.

The Doctor knows there's an impressive arsenal of weaponry in this building, in this very room, probably. He could stop this. But there are people in that robot lookalike of him, human beings. Human beings who think they're doing the right thing, who might very well _be_ doing the right thing. The violent fierceness that was so prevalent so recently in him washes away in the presence of Rose's fearlessness, Rose's compassion, Rose's love.

It's happened already. Rose has helped make him a better man.

Rose slides her hands down the Doctor's arms, grabs his wrists gently, and guides them off her, holding his hands for a moment. She exchanges one last gaze with the Doctor and tries to give him a reassuring smile through her tears.

"Promise me something?"

The Doctor nods immediately.

"If I tell you something, will you promise not say it back."

The Doctor's throat tightens, regretting the promise.

The moment overtakes her, the tragedy and mystery and history of it all, and she chooses what she hopes to be her last sentiment.

"I love you," Rose proclaims.

The Doctor's mouth opens, but Rose grips his hands tighter, a pleading look in her eyes. If he says it, she'll back down. She knows it.

The Doctor, with some effort, clamps his jaw shut.

She gives a smile of gratitude, so reminiscent of the smiles she gave him when he was walking her home, making sure she didn't pass out, and it's so preposterously hard for him to slide his hands out of her and back away. But he manages.

Rose drags her sleeve across her face and collects herself.

"I'm not really at advocate for suicide," she tells the Teselecta, "so I want the history books to say I went down fighting: Please, don't kill me."

The small ghost of a smile. The refusal to perish so easily. The hope she always held. The Doctor decides he's had enough. He turns his gaze from the painful scene.

"You will die," the Teselecta rejects.

"What if I'm extra careful in the future?" she offers.

"You and the Doctor destroy the world," the Teselecta explains.

"I don't want to die," she says.

The Teselecta drops its jaw, and it's mouth glows. Rose freezes at the sight of the beams that could kill her, and she shuts her eyes against the light.

"Hold everything!," a cheerful voice bellows from behind her. "Teselecta, you may have the wrong person."

The jaw closes rigidly, the light abruptly going dim. "Confirmed: this is Rose Tyler."

"I assume you'd also accept the Doctor as your victim."

"Yes."

"Well," a figure brushes past Rose and saunters up the Teselecta. The figure wears a tweed coat and a bow tie is fastened around his neck. There's a broad, testy grin on his face as he announces, "I am the Doctor."


	10. Death and Rebirth

Wait! Before you start! If you appreciate musical experiences with your fiction, you could traverse to the previous chapter and accompany it with Evelyn by Hurts. Goes with that chapter, I believe. Or for listening pleasure accompanied by, "Hey, that kind of relates to that one chapter of that one story." Of course, you don't have to. Whenever authors recommend music with their fanfiction, I don't tend to listen either. Actually, I don't like reading with music, so I suppose you could just appreciate the tune?

Thanks so much for all the comments on the last chapter. The threat in the building was supposed to be a man going berserk over the treatment of the Cybermen, which explains all the Cybermen references I've used, and the Doctor was supposed to actually pull out a weapon, but it happened differently and…I don't know. Just…thank God for inspiring me, because no way I would've come up with that on my own. (I really like God. It's a thing with me.)

Anyway, thanks. Please enjoy your read.

* * *

The man in the bow tie waltzes up to the Teselecta, an almost offensive grin plastered on his face. Rose and the Doctor wear nearly identical manifestations of confusion.

The sound of scuttling footsteps patters behind Rose. She peeks over her shoulder at the sound and finds a redhead and slim boy bursting through the entrance.

"Doctor!" the redhead shouts.

The bow tie man spins theatrically on the ball of his foot, throwing up his arms. "Pond! Glad you could keep up!"

"What's Torchwood? I don't understand!" the redhead seems to take up an old conversation.

"Not now, Amy, I'm introducing myself grandly," the man waves her off.

"Who are you?" Rose frowns.

"I told you," the man smiles broadly at her as if unable to resist, "I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" Rose's frown deepens.

"Honestly, Rose, of all people to ask such a thing…"

Rose gives a small shake of her head, still perplexed.

"_The _Doctor, Rose. _The _Doctor."

Rose absently drags the back of her hand across the remaining residue of her tears. "No, you're not. Is he, Doctor?"

She turns to face her Doctor, who's looking over their arrivals with a hesitant curiosity. He focuses most intently on the new arrival in the bow tie and a resignation is present on his face.

"He knows," the bow tie man grins with satisfaction. "Remember, Rose, how I'd know if there was another one of my people present anywhere in the universe?"

"This universe feels different," the Doctor echoes himself darkly.

Rose's lips part, her eyes widen, and she turns back to the bow tie man.

"Doctor?" she asks softly, a quiet acceptance.

"There's my girl," he doesn't seem able to stop smiling.

"What happened to you?" she exhales.

The new Doctor scowls. "Oh, I'd forgotten you were a difficult one with the regenerations."

"Regeneration?" the redhead repeats from behind her. "You never fully explained that to us."

The Doctor familiar to Rose explains quickly and briefly, somehow feeling he could tell the redhead these things, "It's like dying and birth wrapped into one moment. Quite painful."

"You've regenerated?" Rose asks. "The other Doctor…my Doctor…he's…"

The bow tie Doctor waits for her to finish. When she doesn't, he finishes for her. "Dead. Yes."

Rose raises her eyebrows. "That wasn't the word I was gonna use."

"Might as well be. We're not the same man. It's kind of like Jenny. Remember Jenny? How she was born, but was born with knowledge and memories and experience she wasn't actually alive for? That's what regeneration is like."

He takes in Rose's blank gaze.

"Oh, right! You weren't there for Jenny. That's a shame. Everyone else was."

"He's dead?" Rose asks barely above a whisper.

The bow tie Doctor's face falls in the presence of her grief.

"Excuse me," a metered, monotonous voice cuts in.

"Right!" the Doctor exclaims, spinning back to face the Teselecta. "You! Yes! Hi! I'm the Doctor."

"No, you are not the Doctor."

"Pardon me, but I've taken great care in finding out exactly who I am and I am fairly certain that I am the Doctor."

"You are not the Doctor."

"Open your mind a little, old chap," the Doctor pats the Teselecta on the shoulder. "Now what was it you wanted Rose and that other Doctor for, again?"

"Crimes against humanity."

"What crimes?"

"That is confidential."

"Ah, of course," the Doctor nods, clapping his hands together. "I understand. Timelines and things. What _am _I allowed to know about it?"

"The Doctor and Rose Tyler destroy the world."

The Doctor cocks his head to one side, and then turns behind him. He points to Rose and her Doctor respectively, "That Rose Tyler? And that Doctor?"

"Confirmed."

He faces the Teselecta again. "Well, I think you may be mistaken. Destroying planets is not something Rose Tyler does. As for the Doctor, well, assuming that Rose has helped avert that genocidal phase he went through, if there was any Doctor that was going to destroy the world, it would be me. I'm a bit clumsy, you see. I might hit the wrong button or go into a fit of unabashed and uncalled for fury. It seems to happen to me on occasion."

"Doctor," the redhead pipes up, a tremor of worry in her voice, "are you sacrificing yourself for her?"

"Wouldn't be uncharacteristic of me, but no," he replies without turning around. "I'm merely conversing, and a conversation takes two, so what say you, Teselecta?"

The Teselecta, or the people in it, think for a moment. "You are not the Doctor," it decides.

The Doctor throws his entire upper body backward in emphasis of his eye roll. "Ugh, humans who refuse to listen. Ever so frustrating. On to my next point." His face grows serious and challenging. "Why is it your responsibility to stop it?"

"Why is it not?"

The Doctor nods. "Fair point. If you can save a planet, why wouldn't you? Raises other questions, though. If you went back and stopped every tragedy, would this world appreciate joy and love and peace and calm?"

"Destruction of a civilization is not merely another tragedy."

"It is for me," he replies darkly, a coldness in his eyes. It doesn't fade away as he continues, "Now, I think you've given Rose and the Doctor fair warning and I think you should go. And change form when you do, because this body is very disorienting. This whole situation is, but you're definitely not helping."

"Also, please give Pete back," Rose requests quickly.

"Ah, yes, that, too."

The room waits, barely a breath heard. The Teselecta people converse inside the eerily still machine. The audience waits eagerly and hopefully, and Rose even takes up chewing on her nails. Finally, a response.

"No."

Everyone instinctively starts stepping backwards.

"Rose, I hope you remember this part," the bow tie Doctor says quietly. Then, raising his voice, "_Run!_"

They all ready their leg muscles for exertion when a new exclamation comes from the rigid mouth of the Teselecta.

"_Wait_!" the voices drones. "It's me, Pete!"

Rose replies immediately. "Hello?! Are you alright?!"

"These people ought to know better," the Teselecta voice states. "Never let me near operable machinery."

The Doctor, Rose's Doctor, grins. "Good man, Pete! What did you do?"

"Oh, after a got ahold of a bracelet thing guarding me from the weird killer sphere things and made my way to the controls, it was simple rewiring. I've either disabled the ships external weaponry or created a self-destruct sequence. Either way, they probably don't want to push any buttons that would attack you."

Rose takes a moment to wonder how eventful the inside of that machine has been the past several minutes.

The bow tie Doctor smiles. "Pete Tyler! You're fabulous! Now, Teselecta people, please spit out Pete and return to wherever it is you're from with reassurance that Rose and the Doctor do not destroy Earth, and even if they do . . . well, you survived, so humanity presumably lives on somehow . . . Okay, you can keep an eye out if you must, but really, they're lovely people."

The room waits again, and the blank stare of the machine suddenly seems a tad haughty.

"Fine."

"Yay!" the redhead squeals with relief. The boy beside her sighs happily, as if he'd been holding in a breath.

Rose smiles, suddenly overwhelmed by the fact that she lived on. She turns toward her version of the Doctor, also smiling, and both of their smiles dissolve in the same instant.

They live on. They both live on.

Spurts of the moment they'd just shared play in Rose's mind, the kiss and the exchanged sentiments, both spoken and unspoken, and she looks away from him, finding her gaze refocused on the new arrival.

The Doctor, the other Doctor, had returned.

What changes?


	11. What Happened to Donna?

The bow tie Doctor is absolutely insistent that the group gets chips together, but not before commenting on the excessive possibility of violence Torchwood represents.

"Let's get out of here. All this weaponry is making me uncomfortable. Look at that dreadful thing!" He gestures grandly at the biggest piece in the room.

"Dimension cannon," Rose replies simply.

"Ah, yes," the Doctor frowns. Changing the subject briskly, he points elsewhere, "What's that thing?"

"Oh, you'd like that one," Rose smiles, resting her hands on her hips. "Makes noise and shoots at things, but wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Really?" the Doctor quirks an eyebrow. The gun rests on a stand mounted on the glossy, white wall, cylindrical in shape and ominous in size.

"Then why have it?" Rory poses the question.

"Well, it was _supposed _to work," Rose shrugs. "Anyways, chips?"

* * *

Rose leads the group to a restaurant near the coffee shop with the Cybermen poster plastered on the wall. They push two small, round tables together at the outdoor eating area and sit, Amy and Rory on the leftmost edge, Rose and her Doctor on the rightmost, Amy's Doctor centered between them at the place where the tables touched.

"So!" the Doctor begins excitedly as he helps himself to the chips. "This is exciting, isn't it?"

The group remains silent, shifting uncomfortably in their seats. The bow tie Doctor pouts at the lack of response.

Rose's Doctor props his elbows on the table and asks rather seriously, "How did you get here?"

"How do we ever get here?" the Doctor shrugs, talking past his mouthful. "You know, I'm beginning to think that something got lost in Gallifreyan translation and that 'parallel world' is really meant to just mean 'geographically inconvenient location.'"

The Doctor raises one eyebrow thoughtfully at the theory. Amy chimes in next, addressing Rose.

"We've heard so much about you," she tells her.

"Have you?" Rose says, mildly surprised. Sarah Jane hadn't gotten a mention.

"Only after we crashed into this world and repeatedly demanded explanation," Rory clarifies.

Ah, Rose thinks. That makes more sense.

"So are you two the new ones, then?" Rose gestures to Amy and Rory with her fork.

"New what?" Amy seems confused.

"Companions, they're often called," bow tie Doctor explains.

"We're not the only ones?" Amy frowns.

"It was a shock to me, too," Rose agrees with a little smirk.

"Oh, I kind of like these bits," the bow tie Doctor grins. "I knew Amy and Rose would get on well. You haven't been properly introduced. Rose, this is Amy Pond, the little Scottish girl who waited a considerably long time before aging unexpectedly and getting married. Amy, this is Rose Tyler, the girl who didn't do a lot of waiting and kept coming back for me, which was awfully dangerous but indeed flattering. This gentlemen," he gestures to Rose's Doctor, "is a meta-crisis clone of my most recent regeneration who lost a heart. And this is Rory," he waves a hand toward him. "Amy's husband."

Rory purses his lips in trained acceptance of his meager introduction.

"You sure picked up new ones quickly," Rose's Doctor notes. "I thought I gave up picking people up."

"_You _did. The other Doctor did. But then I met Amelia Pond, and how could I resist?"

"But you'd decided, hadn't you? You'd decided it was better to stop taking up people to travel with you?"

"Sorry, but are you trying to make the Doctor feel bad about taking me with him?" Amy wonders.

"I do plenty of that without his help," bow tie Doctor notes. "And what do you mean picked them up _quickly_?"

"Well, you didn't seem to wait very long to pick up new companions," Rose points out. "And where's Donna?"

"How long has it been for you?" the Doctor pointedly ignores the latter question.

"'Bout two days," Rose replies, a little bewildered herself at how short the time span sounds.

"Two days?!" the visiting Doctor exclaims, running his eyes over the pair's apparel. "Is it normal to wear the same clothes over the course of two days?"

"You could talk," Amy points out.

"How long has it been on your end?" Rose's Doctor inquires.

"Hard to say for sure, given my living situation," he says, "but a great deal longer than two days."

"How do you keep track of your age?" Rory cuts in to ask.

"I guess every single time," the bow tie Doctor admits unashamedly.

"So you could be twelve for all you know?" Rory gathers.

"What are you try'na say?" the bow tie Doctor asks with his mouth full. Amy and Rory exchange smirks.

"When I met the Doctor, I was a child, if that helps work out the time difference," Amy tells Rose.

"You gather up children now?" Rose's Doctor frowns.

"Where does Donna fit into this?" Rose presses.

"Point being, it's safe to say it's been years," the Doctor says. "We must have jumped time as well as space."

"Or the speeds of each timeline have fluctuated," Rose's Doctor offers.

"Perhaps, but that is a _major_ fluctuation," he bounces off the thought nicely.

"I'm still asking where Donna is," Rose reminds them.

"Home. Fine. Safe," the bow tie Doctor handles swiftly.

Rose's Doctor clears his throat without meaning to.

"Why isn't she with you?" Rose presses, for some reason not willing to drop the subject.

"It wasn't good for her," he replies without looking at her, suddenly intently focused on his chips.

"Are you serious?" Rose scoffs. "Do you know how long I monitored Donna's timeline? You should've heard the version of her who'd never met you. She thought she was nothing."

Rose's Doctor clears his throat roughly again. This time, Rose catches on.

"Why is she home?" she asks, a note of concern in her voice.

"It's for the best," her Doctor helps out gruffly.

"So you know what happened?" Rose challenges. "Doctor," she address the bow tied one, "I thought you would have Donna with you when you left me.."

"I know," one Doctor voiced, the other Doctor had known for two days. They both know Rose wouldn't have let him go so easily if he'd gone back to his ship without Donna.

"Rose, she was dying," the bow tie Doctor began somberly. "Burning. Her body couldn't handle my knowledge."

"She's dead?" Rose exclaims.

A heavy silence falls among the five.

"Rose Tyler," the bow tie Doctor says quietly, allowing a smile that doesn't meet his eyes, "even now, your compassion is beautifully astounding."

She waits for the answer to the question, reaching for her drink.

"No, Rose," he finally reveals. "I wiped her memories. I cleared her head of everything we'd ever done together and then dropped her off back home."

The drink spills.

She hisses under her breath, and her Doctor stands the cup upright for her.

"Let me go get napkins," Rose's Doctor offers.

"Let me go with you," Rose offers, an edge in her voice denoting that there was more than napkins up for discussion.


	12. The Hero's Decision

The Doctor shakes some napkins loose from the holder and holds them out to Rose, deciding against taking care of the stains on her clothes himself due to social constructs involving another person's thigh area.

"Thanks," she acknowledges briefly, taking the napkins and running them roughly across the fabric. "So Donna?"

"Yeah, Donna," he agrees, simultaneously sure and unsure what he's agreeing to.

She continues with the napkin as she speaks, "Did you know?"

"Know what?"

She lifts her head and gives him a look. "You know what. Did you know that Donna wasn't going to last much longer after she left?"

"Donna knew it, too," he tells her gravely.

She leans over the counter and deposits the soiled napkins in the trash, having done a decent job with the mess. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"It's not like it was your focus," he recalls with a barely perceptible note of humor.

Rose clenches her jaw at the note. "_Gah_, I knew I should have gone with him."

The Doctor clenches his own jaw at the sentiment, and Rose notices.

"Nah, I didn't mean it like that," she assures him only a little convincingly.

"What _did_ you mean?" he challenges, somehow managing to keep any bitterness out of his voice.

Rose rests her elbow on the counter, not looking at him as she thinks of how to word her response. "The Doctor . . . he's not good without...well, you would know!"

"He's travelled loads without a companion."

"And how has that turned out for him?" Rose challenges.

"_Fine_," the Doctor assures her a tad aggressively. "Rose, he's outside. You've seen him. He's _fine_."

"You said that he'd decided to give up taking up people to travel with him," Rose recalls, pointing a finger at his chest. "What must have happened to him to change that, Doctor? What must have led him to decide that travelling without another person wasn't in his best interest?"

"I don't know, alright!" he admits. "I don't know! But I do know you're always going to choose him over me. But you can't change that you weren't with him, Rose. You didn't go with him. You stayed here. You can't change that."

Rose bites her lip and looks away from him. She puts a hand to her forward, then lowers it, then brings it back again. Very fidgety. When she speaks again, her voice is quiet.

"You knew Donna wouldn't last," Rose says. It's not a question.

The Doctor takes in her face for a long time, wondering what subtleties lay behind the statement. "Yeah."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks.

His expression hardens as he tries to think of an acceptable expression. "I could have."

"But you didn't."

"I . . . I didn't want you to go with him," he admits.

Rose lifts her gaze to his. She'd heard him plainly, but somehow thought to ask, "What?"

"I didn't want to lose you," he says. He didn't even have her at the time. He still didn't have her. But he definitely wouldn't if she'd left him, and it was a hope he didn't want to lose grip on, no matter how futile it seemed.

Rose regards him with wide, glimmering eyes, and he looks away from them.

It was selfish of him, she acknowledges to herself. But he's human now. He behaves that way sometimes. It's not right, but it's _human_.

"We kissed," she recalls distantly.

"To which instance are you referring?" the Doctor says blandly.

"The most recent one," she clarifies. "Are we . . . What was that supposed to mean?"

"It was your idea," he accuses. It was her idea both times, actually, which momentarily pleases him.

Rose chuckles lightly. "We also . . . I mean, I—I said something."

The Doctor doesn't miss a beat. "Yeah, you did."

"I didn't," a new voice joins in.

The Doctor and Rose start slightly as they turn to face the bow tie Doctor.

Rose begins, "How long have you been—"

"Longer than you'd be comfortable with," the Doctor assures her.

"Of course," Rose huffs.

"I was also eavesdropping longer than you'd be comfortable with an hour or so ago," he tells them, "and I witnessed the exchanged sentiments to which you are referring."

"You didn't that would've been a good time to interrupt?" Rose asks.

"A good time," he agrees, "but not the best time. You must agree that my entrance was impeccably timed. Much like my timed involvement into this conversation."

Rose gives him a comically annoyed look.

"Look, Rose," he begins, clasping his hands together, "leaving you was the right decision. The altruistic decision. The hero's decision."

"Was it?" Rose presses.

"Yes," he admits with some difficulty.

She propels herself toward him, looking into his eyes as she asks, "Then why did you come back?"

The sudden proximity startles the Doctor. _Those are Rose's eyes. This is Rose's face. This is Rose's world. _And it's all very unsettling. His eyes dart around her face for a while before he scrabbles up an answer.

"It was an accident."

"An accident?" Rose repeats, not breaking the eye contact, demanding he answer, demanding honesty. "If it was an accident, how come it happened three times?"

The Doctor frowns at this. "What?"

"Torchwood has been monitoring the imprints your ship makes in the surrounding environment," she explains quickly, "and has pinpointed areas of TARDIS interference. There have been two reported to me, and three including the time you actually managed to get through."

The Doctor backs away from her. "Rose, you're mistaken."

"She's right," Rose's Doctor confirms. "Pete told us about them and reported to incidents to us."

"Well, it wasn't me," the bow tie tells them. "I never tried to get here. I was here by accident, though Pond suggested Divine Intervention, which makes sense considering the nature of the situation I walked in and my previous—"

"Doctor!" Rose interrupts a bit rudely. "You didn't try?

"No, Rose, I didn't try. And I only experienced unusual turbulence the one time I got here."

"Only once?" Rose asks.

"Only once."


	13. Reinvention and Recollection

Rose had been up like a shot, tearing off in the direction they'd come. The rest of the troop had promptly begun to trail after her, but that didn't mean they didn't want clearer motivation.

"May I ask why we are walking very briskly!?" the bow tie Doctor asks, his long legs striding to keep up with Rose and the other doctor. "I didn't finish my chips!"

"It doesn't make sense," Rose muses, and it doubles as some semblance of an explanation. "There were other records of TARDIS activity, and you claimed to have only stopped here the one time."

Amy and Rory scuttle after the group, also perplexed.

"Not everything in life has to make sense," the bow tie Doctor reminds her. "Again, what is the reason behind the swift walking?"

Clearly, she's approaching Torchwood, but the reasoning is still unknown.

"I've realized something," Rose tells him.

"What's that, then?" her Doctor prompts. He and the bow tie Doctor wear identical expressions of befuddlement.

"Doctor," Rose begins, facing to her left, where the bow tie Doctor walks, "when did you get here?"

"Today," he replies, still not understanding, "a few hours ago."

"Doctor," she turns to her right, "you said the universe felt different."

"Yeah, because _he's _here," he says.

"But you've been saying that since yesterday," she explains. "What if there's _another _one?"

"Do you think Gallifrey is still alive here?" her Doctor asks, hope dim but present behind his eyes.

"No, that's not what I mean," she clarifies, giving him a brief apologetic look when his face falls nearly imperceptibly. "I mean, we've had multiple TARDIS imprints records for the past two days. Both of you just got here. What if this universe already had a Doctor?"

The two Doctors exchanged astonished gazes across from either side of her. They're emotional range expressed in these expression doesn't go much deeper beyond initial surprise. They're not sure how to feel about that. There are too many factors to consider.

"I've done entirely too much walking today," Amy complains from behind the group.

* * *

Pete had since gone home, thinking that on account of him nearly dying, no one would mind if he took the rest of the day off. Consequently, Rose took control of the technology, typing out codes and pulling up images in the room she'd been in the previous night.

"See? This," she makes a circle with her finger at the screen, "is where the impact happened. It clearly differentiates itself from the rest of the environment."

"Yes, it does," the bow tie Doctor observes. He rests one hand on the control panel, his body angled in toward Rose. "Where else has it been located?"

"There was one at the fringes of Earth's atmosphere," the Doctor recalls. He's also close to Rose, his arms crossed tightly over his chest as he leans forward to squint at the screen, his shoulder brushing Rose's. He would've donned his thick-rimmed glasses at this point to make himself seem more thoughtful. He briefly considered when an opportune moment would be to ask if the other Doctor still had them.

"Yeah," Rose confirms, "and according to these files Pete kept, there have been two more occurrences descending closer and closer to Earth's surface in an almost consistent pattern."

Amy and Rory peer over the trio's shoulders.

"A pattern?" Rory repeats. "Well, then you could track the next occurrence, can't you? And then you can travel to wherever it's predicted to happen."

"Yes, Rory, but we've yet to consider if she wants to," his Doctor turns to tell him. "She's got enough Doctors to keep track of as it is."

"I don't think it matters," Rose says. "Why would the Doctor—or whoever—keep transporting here within such a short time without stopping?"

The Doctors glance at the images again. The ship moves in a pattern, but not an exact one, getting closer and closer to the ground as if the inhabitant kept finding himself in the wrong location, trying and trying to reach his destination, never quite making the whole distance.

"He's trying to land," Rose's Doctor realizes for the group.

"Why can't he land?" she raises the question, gazing determinedly at the screen.

"The TARDIS can track the signals given off by similar ships," the bow tie Doctor offers. "Haven't used that capability in a while, considering the distinct lack of similar ships. There's probably a honing device as well. If we can get roughly to the same location, I can use it to help pull whoever that is to a safe landing."

"Let's go," the Doctor encourages. He reaches for his face before remembering he doesn't have any glasses to purposefully store in his jacket pocket before striding off. He skips straight to the striding. The new group follows. After quickly calculating the next predicted landing spot, Rose joins them.

The bow tie Doctor leads the way back to his ship, naturally having its location distinctly memorized, and the rest of the group trots after him. It's parked rather conspicuously on a street corner and he pushes his way into it, Amy and Rory fluidly filing in after him.

Rose and the remaining Doctor aren't so hurried.

As the TARDIS blooms into view, the pair of them slow to a halt, stopping to marvel at it. Of course it was here. Where there was the other Doctor, there was his ship, but they hadn't given it much thought.

Now it's here, and present, and they are welcome to enter it, a phenomenon they'd thought they'd never experience again.

It kind of floors them both, especially the Doctor. His eyes grow wide with a childlike wonder.

"Oi!"

They're both startled out of their reverie as the Doctor peeks his head out the door. "You coming or what?"

"Right, sorry," the Doctor replies quietly, and the other one disappears back into the ship. He approaches the ship with a bit of disinclination, Rose trailing after him at a similar pace. When he reaches it, he puts a hand to the door, not pushing yet.

"Alright?" Rose asks, touching his arm with the back of her hand.

"Yeah, fine," he replies swiftly.

Rose looks up at him doubtfully. "You know," she begins, "When someone actually is 'fine,' and is asked if they're okay or how they're doing, the response they think up usually isn't 'fine'."

The Doctor's straight-facing gaze stretches into a smile at the repetition, but he still doesn't push the door open.

Finally, Rose reaches down for his hand, clasping it in both of hers. The Doctor looks down in surprise, then into her face, so full of hope and encouragement.

"Come on, then," she gestures with her head toward the door.

It's the first time she's held his hand since Bad Wolf Bay. And he decides he's ready.

He pushes the door open. An intra-TARDIS bustle consumes them. The bow tie Doctor does laps around the controls fitted onto an angular mechanism.

"Oh, wow," Rose muses, examining the new interior. Neither of the pair had expected the scenery to have changed. The thought hadn't occurred to either of them.

"Oh, right!" the bow tie Doctor seems to remember something. "It's different in here for you! Whattaya think?"

"I . . .," the Doctor begins, "I . . ."

"I liked it better before," Rose admits with a shrug.

"Yeah," the Doctor agrees.

The bow tie Doctor stops fiddling for a moment. "Everybody's a critic," he grumbles.

"I like it," Amy shrugs reassuringly from beside the controls.

Rose finds herself taken back to when she'd met Sarah Jane, and she'd entered the TARDIS to discover its new interior, and she'd expressed her preference for the one she knew.

"Oh my gosh, I'm Sarah Jane," Rose murmurs. Remembering something Mickey had said to her, she added, "_I'm the ex_."

"Hold on, you two!" the Doctor bellows from the controls, wrenching down a lever.

Jostled from her reverie, Rose releases her Doctor's hand, runs up to the metal bars surrounding the controls and grips onto them, the Doctor following suit on a different bar.

"Let's find the Doctor!" the bow tie Doctor proclaims just as the ship begins to rock.


	14. The Second Ship

The ship heaves to the ground at the coordinates Rose provides. The landing turns out rather smooth, and the bow tie Doctor smiles in satisfaction at not having caused any injuries.

"He's due in about forty seconds," Rose announces. She dashes to the door, adding, "Let's go."

"You all go outside," the bow tie Doctor orders. "I can stay here and man the honing devices, perhaps send out a signal he can track."

"If he can't even reach the ground properly," Rory points out, "what makes you think he can follow a signal?"

"He's the Doctor, and I've stopped trying to explain his, or my, eccentrics," he explains. "Now hurry along, Ponds."

Rose pulls the door open, and sunlight spills into the unfamiliar ship. Before departing, she turns and takes a good look at the interior, having learned how unsure it is she'd ever see it again. She takes a moment to feel mesmerized at size and scope, marvels at its change and its lights and its mechanics, and finally, when about ten seconds remain until the expected recurrence, she darts out the door.

Rose's Doctor stops for a sentimental look as well, peering over his shoulder to take in his old ship. For some reason, it feels less welcoming, less familiar, and _not his. _With disappointment, he exits the ship.

They stand in a field, bright green with foliage circling the sides of it. The grass is unruly and unkempt, with weeds sprouting up often. Rose stands in the field, a few feet from the TARDIS, a hand shielding her eyes from damage as she looks skyward, awaiting the new arrival.

The Doctor appears beside her. "How long?"

"Six . . ." she begins. "Five . . ."

Amy and Rory come to stand on Rose's other side.

"Four . . ."

No sounds so far, except the rustle of the wind on the abandoned grasses.

"Three . . ."

The four anticipators begin to hold their breath.

"Two . . . One."

They all squint up at the sky. Nothing.

"One?" Rose repeats hopefully.

Nothing appears. They wait. Ten seconds, twenty, and then a whole two minutes goes by. Nothing. No blue box comes hurtling at them from space.

Rose lowers the hand shielding her eyes from the sun. The Doctor examines her face for a reaction. She doesn't seem too perplexed, to his surprise. She seems quite at peace.

"Oh, well," she shrugs.

"Wait!" a hopeful voice calls out the them. "Let me strengthen the signal!"

Some lever creeks loudly, and the group waits again. Still, nothing.

"If I strengthen the attractive force of the signal…" the Doctor muses loudly, and a few beeps and bops resound toward the exit.

"Doctor," Rose says, "maybe we should just—"

_POW!_

With a force that nearly knocks the group off their feet, a blue box explodes out of the sky above them, brushing the top of their peripheral vision if they were facing forward. A web of blue light crackles around it as it emerges, which fades as it propels forward, hurtling too quickly at the ground.

"Decrease the attractive force!" Rose's Doctor yells into the ship.

"Copy that!" Amy's Doctor acknowledges.

The other police box slows slightly, able to upright itself, but still comes straight for its lookalike.

"_Turn off _the attractive force!" Rose's Doctor clarifies.

"If I do that, it could dematerialize!" he retorts uneasily. "It's barely holding on to the environment, like something is pulling it away."

"Two TARDISes exploding could destroy the galaxy!" Rose's Doctor argues.

"Too late! It's already coming!" Amy's Doctor chirps. "The TARDIS, not the destruction of the galaxy. Hopefully. Duck or something!"

"Run!" Rose's Doctor yells, taking Rose's hand and dragging her in the opposite direction, Amy and Rory following suit. They run about fifty feet before the Doctor deems it safe to turn around and watch.

The new arrival comes closer, dangerously close to the TARDIS, straight at it, and the group experiences a collective intake of breath. The TARDIS looms, grows, comes closer, so close, seconds away…

"DOCTOR!" Amy shrills. "Get out of there!"

Just barely, the group hears, "Aaand . . . _repellent force_!"

The imminent threat is thrust leftward, as if swatted away by a giant backhand. The ship's bottom-left corner crashes into the ground and it teeters on its edge. It balances precariously, leaning dangerously. The Doctor reactivates the attractive force for a moment, and the other TARDIS rights itself, standing rightly.

The group gazes in amazement, all not reacting for a moment.

Rose is the first to speak. "_Hello_?!" she shouts at the new arrival. She scampers up to the door and has the surprising courtesy to knock. "Hello?!"

Amy appears beside her and slams her palm on the door a few times. "_Doctorrr_, you in there?"

Rose gives the door a few shakes, and then frowns at her efforts. "It's locked. Of course it's locked."

"Wait!" Amy's Doctor bounds out of his ship and to his new neighbor. "I wonder . . ."

The Doctor clasps a small key in his hand, and he inserts it into the keyhole.

"Wait!" Rose's Doctor exclaims.

Amy's Doctor peers over his shoulder. "Is there a problem?"

"Just . . . just let me try something," he stammers.

Amy's Doctor doesn't see the harm in it. He removes the key, and he, Amy, and Rose step back for a moment. Rose's Doctor lifts his wrist into the air, positions his fingers together, and snaps.

The new ship's door swings open. Light pools in at the entrance, inviting the group inside.

"Smooth," comments Amy quietly.

"In we go, then!" Amy's Doctor encourages brightly.

Amy and Rory are the first to bustle inside. "There's someone in here!" Amy calls from inside. "They're not conscious. I think they're hurt."

Rose and the Doctors file inside, and, at almost precisely the same moment, are taken aback by their surroundings and freeze to gaze about the place.

"It's my control room," Rose's Doctor notes with pleasant surprise.

"Never mind the interior design," Rory dismisses. "Doctor, this man's hurt!"

A pair of legs sticks out from behind the consoles, the body obscured from view. Rose navigates through the control room's levels with more ease, it being more familiar to her.

"This isn't the Doctor, though," Amy tells her somberly.

Rose comes to stand beside Rory and gazes down at the body. The air catches in her throat as she identifies it.

"Yeah, it is," Rose breathes.

Rory frowns. He peers over his shoulder back at Rose's Doctor, now approaching the group, just to make sure. "No, it's not."

"Yes, it is," Rose's Doctor confirms as he stands beside Amy, his facial expression matching Rose's.

He looks just as the Doctor remembers him, with short hair and a leathered face, right down to the leather jacket.


	15. Dying Doctor

Rose's Doctor, Rose, Amy's Doctor, Amy, and Rory crowd around the unconscious Doctor, emanating the attitude of people about to accomplish something, but none of them actually doing anything productive.

"Well?" Rose's Doctor prompts the huddle. "Is anyone going to resuscitate the man?"

"Do something, Rory. You're a nurse," Amy's Doctor encourages.

"You're a doctor!" Rory argues.

"Didn't seem to help _him _very much!" his Doctor protests, wringing his hands at the unconscious body.

"Is he alive?" Rose asks with concern.

Rory lowers himself onto his knees. He places a hand over the Doctor's left side, the group watching intently over him. "His heart's still beating."

"Both of them?" Amy asks.

"Oh, right," Rory frowns, still unaccustomed to the bivascular system. He moves his hand to the left and feels the steady, but slightly rapid pulse drumming away. "Yes, both of them working. He seems to be—"

"_AUHH!"_

The group collectively jumps backwards as the formerly unresponsive Doctor bolts to a sitting position, inhaling sharply through his mouth.

"Doctor!" Rose exclaims before she's collected herself completely, a hand over her chest. "Doctor, are you alright?"

"That depends," he replies, already fully collected. His head quickly takes in the five observers, his head motion resembling that of a confused bird landing in a new location. "Where am I?"

"In the TARDIS," Rose answers. "Your TARDIS."

"That doesn't explain why you people are here."

"Nor does it explain your unconsciousness," Amy's Doctor points out.

The newly conscious Doctor hops to his feet, nearly hitting several of his observers on his quick ascent upwards. He pushes through the gathered group and starts fiddling with various devices on the control panel.

"Look, normally, I'd be having what you'd call a _cow_ at a bunch of strangers on my ship, but I don't have the time, so if you could please exit the way you came? I'm very busy."

"Doing what?" Rose's Doctor asks.

"Dying, if that's enough of a reason for you." At this, he clutches at his chest, reeling forward slightly, leaving no doubt of his truthfulness.

"Dying?" Amy repeats with a note of concern. "What's wrong?"

He shoots her a baffled and decidedly sassy look. "I do not have to explain myself to you. You people are trespassers. And normally I'm not so jovial about that kind of thing, but like I mentioned before, _I am dying_."

"Well, then, let's not waste any time, then," Amy's Doctor steps forward, clapping his hands together. "Doctor, I'm the Doctor, and," he points his thumbs, "is also the Doctor."

A furrow forms between the brows of the uninformed Doctor. "Okay. My interest is slightly piqued."

Rose's Doctor steps forward. "I'm the humanized clone of a Doctor from a different timeline, and this," he gestures, "is the next regeneration of the Doctor I'm a clone of."

The leather jacket Doctor's eyebrows shoot upwards, and he ceases messing with controls. "Oh, is that all?"

"No, actually," Amy's Doctor responds. "These are a handful of companions picked up throughout our adventures."

"Companions?" he frowns.

"Oh, do you not do that?" Rose's Doctor questions with interest.

"Do what?"

"Pick up friends to come along on your travels," Amy's Doctor clarifies.

The new Doctor clenches his jaw, and a history no one in the ship could've known swims in his eyes. "No, I don't that. Not anymore."

"None at all?" Rose's Doctor prods.

The new Doctor raises a hard gaze to him. "These companions of yours: don't you ever lose them?"

Amy's and Rose's Doctor exchange knowing glances. Amy peers over at Rose, remembering her familiar Doctor regaling her with the tale of her unexpected departure.

"Makes sense," Amy's Doctor nods somberly. "When I was like you, I wasn't the 'companion' type."

"Sorry?" the new Doctor frowns.

"Oh, right!" Amy's Doctor exclaims. "One of the former Doctors in my timestream bears a striking resemblance to you, which explains our ill-informed and immediate friendliness posed toward you and heightened concern over the fact that you seem to have picked up an unhealthy case of dying."

The new Doctor's eyes go hazy for a moment, out of taking in the new information or his inhospitable case of dying, none of them are entirely sure. Nonetheless, his eyes are twinkling again a moment later.

"Very well, then," he gives a brief, exaggerated grin. "Now, please see your way out."

"First off: no," Rose's Doctor replies simply. "Secondly, I'm sure this group agrees that we intend to stay and help you not die."

"You are correct," Amy's Doctor agrees.

"I'm touched," the dying Doctor groans, "however, there's nothing you can do."

"_Aww_, since when is that ever true?" Rose's Doctor offers a broad and hopefully encouraging grin. Rose chortles admiringly at his positivity.

"Well, what are you dying _of_, exactly?" Rory asks, by this point seething with irritation that the question hasn't come up sooner. Nurse instincts.

"Poison," he replies brusquely, beginning to mess with controls again, "from the Juniper Tree."

"Oh!" Amy's Doctor exclaims excitedly, recalling River Song's first interaction with him when she'd poisoned him with a kiss. "Oh, I've had that! Was within seconds of death, but there was a fantastic woman who was in the right place at the right time. Who was it was it who poisoned you?"

Hearing that one of his intruders had been in the situation, the dying Doctor suddenly became more open to conversation. "The Master," he supplies.

Puzzled expressions crossed the faces of Amy, Rory, and their respective Doctor. Amy and Rory had heard a bit about the Master before. And he was decidedly male in these tales.

"Did you . . . did you kiss the Master?" Amy's Doctor poses the question.

"What? No!" the dying Doctor refutes. "He slipped it in a drink!"

"Oh!"

"Did _you _kiss someone?" Rose directed toward Amy's Doctor. She hadn't even bothered the consider the idea of the Doctor moving on from her. Why wouldn't he, though? It's what he wanted _her_ to do. Why wouldn't he want the same for himself?

"Not now, Rose," Amy's Doctor waved a hand in her direction. "There's death afoot."

Simultaneously, Rose's Doctor also pondered the ability the original Doctor possessed when it came to moving on from her.

"How much time do you think you have left?" Amy's Doctor asks.

The dying Doctor, seeming to push a button with an air of finality, reaches up and pulls down a screen. His eyes scan over the readings. "About eleven."

"Eleven minutes!" Amy's Doctor announces. "Eleven! I like the sound of that. Eleven minutes! We can get plenty done in eleven minutes."

"Yeah, well, there's one thing I'd like to get done rather quickly," the dying Doctor suddenly grimaces, clutching his chest, stumbling slightly.

Rose instinctively scuttles up to him, gripping him by the arm to help him steady himself. The dying Doctor peers down at her in surprise.

"Who are you, then?" he asks.

"I'm Rose Tyler," she replies, meeting his gaze. It's disorienting seeing those icy irises again after all these years. "My first Doctor was like you."

"What happened to him?"

"Regenerated. Died, I s'pose you could word it."

"Why?"

"So that I wouldn't," she answers openly.

The dying Doctor scoffs and rolls his eyes.

"Hey! I helped save your . . . I mean, _his _life plenty of times!"

Rose's Doctor chuckled under his breath, because wasn't _that _the truth. _You have no idea_, he thinks to himself.

"Well, would you mind trying again?" the dying Doctor requests roughly.

"Anytime," Rose obliges with a slight lilt of humor. His knees begin to buckle and Rose grips him tighter.

Absently, Rose's Doctor clears his throat. "Let's get started, then," he initiates.


	16. Astronomical Chemistry

Rose takes a moment to reflect on the fact that things have barely slowed down a beat ever since she'd returned. The trend continues as she holds the likeness of her first Doctor upright. She briefly ponders when her next bout of sleep will occur, but the thought is barely long or relevant enough to acknowledge as having ever existed at all in the midst of their current situation.

Rose's Doctor and Amy's Doctor step towards the pair, the three Doctor forming something of a triangle. The Doctor she's holding grips the console and lifts his arm off Rose's shoulder, dismissing her help wordlessly. She slides out from under his arm and catches the hint of a grateful expression crossing his features, only to morph back into a pained grimace, fading as quickly as her thought of sleep had. She gives him an encouraging look, but he's already looking away.

Rose's Doctor notes it, though. They meet eyes, and he gives her a reaffirming nod on the dying Doctor's behalf.

"Well, this is groovy, isn't it!" Amy's Doctor chirps. He waggles a finger at the group. "All three of us together at the same time like good chums."

"Groovy?" the dying Doctor repeats with disdain. "There's a version of the Doctor that says _groovy_?"

Rose's Doctor slides the conversation along, "And one that wears decorative celery. Moving right along, now. We've only got about ten minutes."

"I thought we had eleven minutes!" Amy's Doctor proclaims.

"Yes, but that was about a minute ago," Rose's Doctor replies with slight condescension. "Besides, I like the number ten better. It's good round number."

"Well, I liked having _eleven_ minutes," Amy's Doctor mutters under his breath.

The dying Doctor speaks up angrily, "And when we get to nine, maybe I'll be quite pleased with how the number rolls off the tongue, but honestly, _I'd like to have a few more than that_."

"Right! Of course!" Rose's Doctor exclaims. He spins on the ball of his feet agily, facing the other inhabitants of the ship. "Everyone, go through this ship and look for a red liquid with a sort of amber undertone, probably in a glass tube. It should—"

"I tried that," the dying Doctor cuts him off.

"Okay, then," Rose's Doctor accepts. "Try finding a blue liquid with a gold substance at the bottom, which should—"

"Tried that, too."

Amy's Doctor offers an attempt. "Have you tried the purple gel with the silver flecks floating around in it?"

"Yep."

All three of the Doctor's faces fall.

"There's got to be something that would work," Rose hopes aloud.

"Believe me, _I_ tried to figure out an antidote," Amy's Doctor tells her over his shoulder.

"But you lived," Rose points out. "What was your cure?"

"Out of the question," Amy pipes up for the first time in quite a while. Rose and Rose's Doctor give her a puzzled look, but let the aggressive tone go unmentioned. "We can search the ship. There should be something somewhere."

"I'm not so sure, Amy," Amy's Doctor says.

"Then there _is_ a possibility," Amy says determinedly. "This isn't your ship. You don't know what's on here."

"Excuse me," the dying Doctor chimes in, "but I have been on this ship much longer than any of you _trespassers_ have. Do you think I'm that much of a stupid oaf that I can't find a cure on my own ship?"

"Well, you didn't," Amy notes.

"Because _there isn't one here_," he leers.

"Then maybe we can mix something together," Rose suggests, coming to Amy's aid.

"This is alien technology and medicine, not your school chemistry class," the dying Doctor snaps.

"Well, good," Rose smirks, unfazed by his attitude. "I was rubbish at chemistry. I was_ good_ with alien tech."

"Yeah, that explains all that peroxide in your hair."

Rose shoots him an expression half-aghast and half-bemused. "Do you want your life saved or not, mister?"

"Moving right along, then," Rose's Doctor derails the banter. "We can spend about four minutes looking for things to use. Anything ingestible, bring it to me, and I can sonic it and . . ." he catches a sympathetic looks from Rose. "Oh, right." He scratches at the back of his head uncomfortably. "One of the other Doctors can sonic it, I suppose, and figure out if it has the properties to do the job."

"Right!" Amy's Doctor claps his hands together eagerly, clearly not willing to dwell on that subject. "Everyone, locate something that looks helpful."

"If I drink something that kills me . . ." the dying Doctor warns.

"Well, that wouldn't make much of a difference, would it?" Rose's Doctor reminds him cheerily. "Off we go, then!" He trots off toward a conjoining room, knowing the ship like the back of his hand. Rose scampers immediately after him. Rory is about the follow, when a harsh voice halts him.

"Hey! You!" the dying Doctor lifts a finger at Rory, his face angled forward to highlight his face in an intimidating manner.

Rory turns after a moment, confused. "What?"

"Don't think I haven't noticed you here," the Doctor notifies him, an overt hint of aggression in his voice.

"I admit, that's actually very refreshing," Rory replies.

The dying Doctor lowers his finger. "I don't know why you're here, or why you're helping me now, and admittedly, I appreciate it, but that doesn't mean you can stay."

"I didn't ask to—"

"As soon as this is over, I want you off this ship. You got that?" the dying Doctor demands.

Rory shoots Amy a highbrowed expression. "Um . . . of course."

The dying Doctor's only indication of the answer is a lingering look, and then he swaggers down to one of the ship's many rooms, leaving Amy and her husband and Doctor in the console room.

"Okay, what was that about?" Amy inquires once he's left.

"I'm not sure," Amy's Doctor scowls, "but it certainly wasn't polite."

"We don't even _know_ him," Amy complains. "You know what, why do we even _have _to find him a cure?"

"Now, Amy, don't be spiteful," her Doctor chides lightly. He reaches into his jacket and retrieves his sonic screwdriver, flipping it nimbly into to the air with a circular motion, and then thrusting it open once it returns to his waiting grasp. "Let's see if can't find an antidote, shall we?"

* * *

~**End of Chapter**~

This is a lot of characters. This is kind of difficult. Is the pacing okay? Oh, and the numbers gag. Did you catch that? Was it too...dumb? ARE YOU HAPPY? CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING? ARE YOU COMFORTABLE? PLEASE LOVE ME.

OH, AND BILLIE AND DAVID RETURNING. ISN'T THAT GREAT?


	17. Divide and Conquer

Rose enters the room a while after her Doctor has. She'd paused just outside the exit to the control room and witnessed the dying Doctor snapping at Rory. She didn't like seeing the Doctor like that. Or any Doctor, for that matter.

The room she emerges into seems to be a sort of neglected storage space. The floor is hardly visible amidst wires and different space bits-and-bobs and even mundane earth collectibles, like action figures and eating utensils which, by interplanetary standards, might actually be fascinating. She bends to her knees beside her Doctor, the metacrisis clone, and begins digging through the rubble for something appearing helpful.

"That was strange," she muses as she lifts a spiked, orange contraption to her line of vision.

"To which incident are you referring?" the Doctor asks with a small, reflective groan.

"I just saw the Doctor," she begins, leaning in to talk softly to him, "the dying one, I mean, give that Rory guy a scolding. I thought he was about to slap him or something."

The Doctor frowns at her. "That's odd," he agrees, "but that regeneration wasn't the friendliest. He's probably just prickly. He's in a delicate state, after all."

"But he acted like he _knew _him," Rose continues. "Like he has beef with him or something."

"Rose, as much as I'm concerned about Rory's hurt feelings, I am a tad more concerned with the newest Doctor's functioning organs."

"Right," Rose purses her lips. She gives herself more fully into her search. She's not feeling up to losing a Doctor when she just thought she'd dropped the habit.

"I've yet to reach the ends of this ship, you now," the Doctor informs her with a twinkle in his eye. "There's bound to be something helpful somewhere."

"This isn't your ship, though," Rose reminds him as she untangles her fingers from some suspicious green stuff. "It may not be constructed the same way."

"Looks the same structurally," the Doctor's eyes spare a second to flitter around the room. "Still, best not get attached to it."

"Maybe you could chop this one in half and keep one of the halves," Rose suggests.

The Doctor pauses in his search to give Rose a sidelong look. She shrugs in her defense.

"Well, it's large!"

* * *

"Three minutes left to search!" Amy's Doctor announces as he scampers down a corrider, Amy and Rory in tow. "Seven total!" he adds helpfully. He curls his fingers around the edge of a doorway and pivots on the ball of his foot into a room with what looks like a metal weeping willow tree with orbs of light dangling from its gleaming "vines".

"Ah, gorgeous!" the Doctor exclaims, clapping his hands together. "Good thing we still have this."

"What is it?" Amy asks, squinting at the glowing orb nearest to her.

"A machine," the Doctor explains as he approaches the thing, "that creates other machines."

"What other machines?" Rory asks.

"Any of them," the Doctor clarifies. "Whatever you want."

"That might prove useful," Rory admits with a satisfied shrug.

"I'd say," the Doctor agrees. "Machine! Assemble something to combat the bodily effects of the poison of the juniper tree!"

The group waits for the machine to put on a show of manufacture something brilliant, but outside the barely perceptible swaying of the vines, it stays still. The groaning of the engines resounds through the room, only emphasizing the heavy silence.

"Did I forget to say 'please'?" the Doctor prompts hopefully.

More groaning. More swaying. More nothing.

"That's disappointing," Amy huffs.

"Isn't it, though?" the Doctor agrees.

* * *

The dying Doctor has considerable trouble keeping upright as he weaves through the TARDIS corridors. He clutches at his chest, trying to ignore the irregular, faulty heartbeats drumming away in there beneath his ribcage.

This search is futile. He knows it is. He appreciates the efforts of the new arrivals. He really does. Even the one who apparently calls himself "Rory". But it's useless. If there was a cure hidden somewhere in this ship, he would've found it.

Instead, he ambles to the library.

* * *

"Two minutes," Rose tells her Doctor.

He groans in frustration, and then pushes to his feet. "Let's try another room."

The pair searches through four more rooms in the remaining two minutes. The Doctor finds a particularly old sample of grilled cheese, but nothing substantially helpful in preventing the poison-induced demise of the dying Doctor.

"Nothing," Rose croaks as she comes across another vile of liquid that the Doctor informs her for the umpteenth time does not do the job at hand, and would probably just kill him quicker.

"It's not over yet," the Doctor comforts her, absently placing a hand on her shoulder. "Maybe someone else found something. Let's go meet up."

The Doctor and Rose reach the console room just as Amy, Rory, and their Doctor file in. Their expressions of dejection illustrate their success, or lack thereof.

"This isn't good," Amy notes, seeing the other Doctor and Rose's expressions that likely mirror her own.

"Where is he?" Rory asks, scanning the room.

"Here," the dying Doctor enters, his face more peaceful than anyone else's in the room.

"Did you find something?" Rose asks hopefully.

"I already looked," he told her. "I've been in the library."

"The library?" Rose's Doctor frowns.

"Yep," he confirms. "I've been brushing up on spiritual texts. Those kinds of things are helpful when facing the great beyond."

Rose opens her mouth to protest. Amy's Doctor finds words first.

"Getting to grips with Scripture can prove quite healthy," he agrees, "however, none of this ship's current guests have any intention to let you face the great beyond just yet."

The dying Doctor gives a doubtful scoff, side-eying Amy's Doctor, or perhaps Amy or Rory standing behind him. "Well, I don't actually need your permission, do I?" He waves off the pitying expression coming at him. "It's not a big deal," the dying Doctor shrugs, sauntering up to the console and fiddling with some levers and buttons. "We've all got to go sometime, after all."

"Yes," Rose concedes, "but not you, and not now."

"You're not the judge of that, sweetheart," the Doctor replies, but the instinctive condescension is lost on Rose as he grimaces, bearing his teeth against the pain. His knuckles whiten as he grips a lever of the console.

No one gives a timestamp. No one wants to know how much time is left.

Soon, though.

It will be over soon.


	18. Choices and Poisons

It's difficult for the dying Doctor to stand at this point. His knees quiver, and his grip on the console tightens and weakens in the same white-knuckled motion. He sinks to his knees beside the controls, his torso heaving forward, and he plants a hand against the metal grating of the floors.

Rose sinks to the floor in front of him, gripping him by the shoulders. "No!" she exclaims to the Doctor's ailment.

She raises her head to scan the other faces of the room, the other Doctors, hoping to see an idea lurking behind the eyes of one of the healthier counterparts. The Doctor with the bow tie offers no such hope. His face seems thoroughly drained of it. He refuses to meet Rose's eyes, instead opting to traverse his gaze around the flooring.

Rose peers over her shoulder at the Doctor most familiar to her. He doesn't want to wordlessly transmit the message either: that he's out of plans or cures or options and this Doctor is dying and she will lose another one. But he meets Rose's gazes steadily rather than averting it like his bow-tied colleague. He cannot help her avoid this, but he can help her. With the look he offers Rose, he shares his strength and assurance and togetherness. Rose, with a look, accepts it from him, and then returns her focuses to the dying Doctor.

She opens her mouth as if to say something, but whatever that something might be, it escapes her. What can she say now?

Rose's Doctor, seeing her bent on the floor at a loss for words, wants desperately to offer her something more than a look.

"You said this happened to you," Rose's Doctor addresses the other upright Doctor. "How were you cured?"

"No," Amy cuts in, slicing the air with her hand.

"What was it?" Rose latches onto the glimmer of hope ravenously.

Amy's Doctor breathes deeply, his shoulder sloping downward. "I was seconds from death," he recounts, "and a woman, River Song . . ."

Rose's Doctor's eyes widen slightly at the familiar, pretty name of the enigmatic woman he'd encountered once before, but he doesn't interrupt.

". . . she used up her regeneration energy to heal me," he finishes.

"Regeneration energy?" Rose's Doctor's eyebrows slant together.

"She was conceived on the TARDIS. It's a lengthy story with lots of other lengthy stories crammed in it," Amy's Doctor waves the unspoken questions away with a flick of his wrist.

"Would it work with him?" Rose asks.

Amy's Doctor thinks for a moment. "Yes. I suppose it would."

"But he's not going to do it," Amy cuts in. She turns to more directly confront him. "Doctor, you are not going to waste all your regeneration energy on some stranger you just met."

"I like the redhead," the dying Doctor chuckles weakly from the floor. "She's sensible."

"Amy," her Doctor responds to her, "I don't have to use _all _my regeneration energy. River's got usurped, sure, but she had less of it than I do, being what she is and me being what I am. And I was markedly close to death. This won't use up all my energy."

Amy examines the Doctor's expression, making quite certain he's being truthful. "Really?" she asks.

"Really," he confirms. "Besides, you're not the boss of me and you can't tell me what to do with my spacey-wacey energy."

He turns melodramatically from Amy's wholly unimpressed face, adjusting his bow tie as he does so. He kneels beside the Doctor who, by his calculations, and he has an acute sense of time, has well under two minutes remaining before the poison takes its full effect.

"It's a nice thought, Doctor," the dying Doctor compliments through his panting, "but I doubt it would work."

"And why is that?"

"The man who poisoned me," he begins, sitting himself down and resting his head against the console. "He took away the rest of my regeneration energy."

"How'd he manage that?" Rose's Doctor frowns.

"It's not very hard to incapacitate a man who's just been fatally poisoned."

"Well, should that matter?" Rose dismisses. "This Doctor can just give up some of his and give you a bit."

Amy's Doctor looks somber, already understanding. "If I had been in this state, I don't think River would've been able to heal me."

"What? Why?" Rose shakes her head, frustrated at the coming and going nature the possibility of a miracle seemed to possess.

"The poison disabled my regeneration, but I still had the energy," the Doctor recounts. "River's energy combined with it to help catalyze it again while also healing the damage done to my anatomy. However, this Doctor has none, so my energy would have nothing to catalyze with."

"But he'd still heal, wouldn't he?" Rose's hope lingers.

"With enough energy, yes," the Doctor confirms, "but it would take a _colossal _magnitude of energy. A _ridiculous _quantity." He pauses, scanning those standing around him. "I would have to give up all of regeneration energy, and even then, I can't guarantee that he'd ever regenerate."

"Well, can't Rose's Doctor give up some of his?" Rory suggests.

_Rose's Doctor_. He takes a moment to inwardly smile at the label. "I don't have any regeneration energy," he tells them apologetically. "I can't regenerate."

"It's this Doctor or that Doctor," Amy's Doctor proclaims soberly, gazing down at the slumping Doctor with about a minute of life left in him. "Which most deserves to live?"

"No, no, life doesn't work like that," Rose rejects.

"Then how does it work, Rose?" Amy's Doctor lifts his gaze to her, something dangerous glinting in his eyes as he's faced with yet another morally questionable decision that he would never wish on another. "How do we decide which Doctor lives and which dies?"

Rose meets his gazed blankly, slightly taken aback by the darkness that just appeared from the man who mere moments ago seemed to regard everything with childish delight.

"You wouldn't_ die_," Rose's Doctor cuts in pointedly. "You just wouldn't regenerate whenever the time came. And either way, the form you're in now dies."

"So you're of the opinion I should give him my energy, then?" Amy's Doctor asks.

Rose's Doctor takes a moment to really consider that inquiry. If he gave the Doctor the energy, then all of the Doctors would be like him. They wouldn't regenerate, and they'd travel the skies, and Rose could go with them. Would Rose stay with him if two others entered her life who could offer her more than he could? On the other hand, if Amy's Doctor kept the energy to himself, the poisoned Doctor would die and the other Doctor would probably gallivant on back to where he belonged, and leave Rose with him like he'd intended.

The Doctor would do a lot for Rose, but would he sacrifice a life to keep her? The life of a Doctor, no less?

_Of course not. _

That's not what his relationship with Rose had ever fostered or encouraged.

"I'm of the opinion that you should give him your energy," the Doctor finally reveals.

Rose, despite herself, despite knowing the sacrifice this meant for Amy's Doctor, smiles at his reply.

"Agreed," Amy's Doctor concurs, his smile small, but free of regrets.

Amy seems remarkably uneasy about this turn of events, but doesn't protest the decision, perhaps knowing she is outvoted.

"Let's get to it, then," Amy's Doctor raises his palms in the air in preparation.

The dying Doctor's eyes had fallen closed, and Rose gently shakes his shoulder in attempt to rouse him.

He wobbles as his weight shifts, but otherwise, does not move.

Now, the Doctors each had an impressive sense of time. However, it wasn't always perfect. The dying Doctor was the one to proclaim that they'd had eleven minutes left. One's judgment can be impaired, though, when met with an unhealthy case of dying.

Rose keeps shaking the Doctor, but to no avail.

Although she was against the intended plan, with the shock of the matter, Amy's face falls. She claps a hand over her mouth. Rory circles an arm around her in a gesture of comfort, but the suddenness of the issues affects him as well, his stunned faced advertising shock of his own.

And with that, the dying Doctor becomes the dead Doctor.


	19. Come and Go

Rose continues shaking the dead Doctor long after everyone in the room has realized twice over that he is not to be roused.

"Doctor," she repeats, her volume swelling. "Doctor!"

"Rose," Amy's Doctor says gently. He doesn't finish. He doesn't have to. He puts a hand on Amy's shoulder. She still seems shaken.

Rose gapes silently at the dead body for a while. Rose's Doctor approaches her gingerly, and then bends down beside her.

"I'm sorry," he offers her simply. And he means it.

She looks up at him, mouth still hanging open. She looks . . . confused.

"I'm so sorry," he emphasizes. Instinctively, he moves his hand toward her and pushes a strand of hair out of her face, and then lets his hand linger on her cheek for a moment.

"Why?" she says vaguely, her eyes narrowing.

"I don't know," he says, somehow understanding. He drops his hand.

"Why would we find him just have him go and . . ." he doesn't finished.

"If I may be blunt," Amy's Doctor says from above them. "And I mean that. Very blunt. Rudely blunt. Downright inappropriate. Dancing-on-graves inappropriate. This very well could be mentioned later, but I am a guest, and I'm not sure how much time I have. I've learned when things ought to be said, they ought to be said quickly. The pair of you helped teach me that. Does Bad Wolf Bay ring any bells?"

"What is it?" Rose's Doctor asks suspiciously.

"The Doctor is dead," he reiterates. "That much is true. And it's a tragedy, I know. But his ship . . ."

As if responding, the interior suddenly lights up around them, and a glow falls over the group. Simultaneously, the ship resounds one of its trademark engine grinds.

"Its pilot is dead," Rose's Doctor reflects on the burst of energy. "It should be in the early stages of disengagement."

"Maybe," Amy's Doctor offers, "it accepts a new pilot."

Rose's breath catches in her throat as she understands what this means. She exchanges wide-eyed expressions with the Doctor.

* * *

Rose badgers the remaining Doctors about the traditions of their people, considering that _is _the Doctor's heritage. They keep tight-lipped about it, though. They assure her that if this Doctor is anything like his likeness that they remember, he'd much prefer a human burial than the Gallifreyan customs.

That's what they do. They bury the dead Doctor in the earth's dirt, in the conveniently empty field their ships met upon. Amy's Doctor retrieves a few shovels from his ship, having monumental difficulty maintaining a clumsy grip on them. The Doctors and the companions help dig the grave. Rose's and Amy's help was accepted hesitantly. When the boys had politely insisted Rose had a long day, she'd simply claimed a shovel anyway, ignoring their gentlemanliness. Amy made sure they knew how offended she was by their politeness, insisting she possessed twice the upper-body strength that Rory had. (_"But I've had a sword. Have you ever wielded a sword?" "Are you asking for a demonstration, Rory?")_

It's early evening by the time the group completes the hole. The Doctors and Rory are the ones to choose to lower that deceased into it. This time, Amy and Rose don't even offer.

The three men enter the ship, still alight. Amy's Doctor hoists the dead Doctor up, gripping beneath the arms, and Rory takes him by the legs. Rose's Doctor finds himself standing off to the side, supervising as they saunter him out the door.

Buttons and lights bleep and blink around Rose's Doctor in a manner he finds familiar. Paradoxically, he finds it uncomfortable that it's so familiar. He reflects on this while the screen, hovering above his head, alerts him of an incoming transmission.

He squints up at the screen propped up from the console. Hesitantly, he lifts his hand and drags the screen down to get a better look at it. He presses the buttons he remembers accept incoming messages. The screen goes static for a moment, and then a face appears. Full cheeks and big eyes and dark hair fill the screen.

"Hello?" the girl on the screen says.

"Hello?" he echoes. "Who are you?"

"I'm Lara."

"Lara who?"

"Lara Oswald," she replies. "Chief of Intergalactic and Time-Crossing Affairs of the Republic of Restituo. Who am I speaking to?"

"I'm the Doctor."

"Doctor who?" she responds pointedly.

"You called _me_," he points out.

"Doesn't mean I know who you are," she shrugs. "We've been getting strong signals from your location. There have been colossal waves of interference from your general area. I sent out a transmission signal to warn whoever responsible."

"Why would they need warning?"

"The signals seem to emit from a transportation device of some sort," she explains. "These signals are cresting, but if they follow the pattern they've been, it's predicted that the signals will heighten and peak, and then drop into dormancy."

"Whatever vehicle is giving off these signals," he clarifies, "will stop functioning?" No one was around to benefit from it, but he had gotten used to verbally simplifying information for a companion's sake. It came naturally to him now.

"According to these signals," she looks down at something out of the frame, "the ship hasn't functioned for a while, but has just harnessed enough power to do so. However, the power source does not match the power storage. If it keep absorbing power, the vehicle could go shut down and, potentially, after a while, explode."

The Doctor raises an eyebrow. "Why do you care enough to tell me this?"

"Kindness, for one thing," she shrugs as if this should be obvious. "Secondly, the strength of these dangerous signals. The fact that they've even reached me hint that an explosion of the source could mean colossal damage, even for me. You're on Earth, aren't you?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah? That makes one of us."

The Doctor nods his understanding. "How long?"

"By my calculations, ten minutes till dormancy and fifteen until explosion, give or take." She delivers this news with an infectious air of positivity, but the image that she knows what she's talking about. The Doctor likes her.

"Thank you," he says. "Clara, was it?"

"Lara," she amends. "And I never got your name."

"Get used to disappointment, Lara," he smirks.

She smiles. "Just don't blow me up. Or yourself. Or whoever takes care of the source."

Her gaze lowers to something outside the frame and the screen blinks back to static again. The Doctor pushes the screen off to the side. It squeaks on its bar exactly the way he remembers. He trots outside where Amy's Doctor and Rory busily shovel dirt over the dead Doctor's body.

"Where have you been, mate?" Rory asks, running an arm over his brow.

"I just received a transmission in there," the Doctor reveals.

"Moving in quickly, aren't we?" Amy's Doctor responds.

"Some girl on another planet called," he gestures back at the ship. "She says she's been getting signals."

"Then tell her to let the boy make the first move," Amy's Doctor suggests, "and perhaps mild flirtation wouldn't hurt."

"Not those kind of signals," Rose's Doctor rolls his eyes. "From your ship. It works. Or, it does for about ten more minutes. In about fifteen, it explodes and takes who-knows-how-many planets with it."

Amy's Doctor pats down some of the dirt on the meager grave. "Let's see if there's any truth to that, then."

Amy's Doctor saunters into his ship, and the group files in after him. He bends over the controls, letting his shovel clatter to the ground, and pulls at three different levers. The environment blinks into light, and the engine roar greets them.

"Looks like your source might be right," Amy's Doctor observes. "About ten minutes left, she said?"

"Yeah, ten."

"Might want to play it safe, though," Amy's Doctor says. "We don't need another case of bad timing."

The group shuffles uncomfortably.

"Wait a minute," Rose says. "You're leaving already?"

"It appears so," he confirms, turning to face her. "Just as I expected, it appears we have limited time left together." His eyes move to her face, and then to her Doctor, then back to her.

"Being that we have so little time left," he begins, "I have an audacious, well-intended offer to make you that I haven't thought about nearly enough to be wise to ask."

"What?"

"Would you like to come with me?"


	20. Rose's Doctor

There's a collective intake of breath from the group, a simultaneous raising of various eyebrows.

Amy's Doctor catches himself quickly. "No, sorry!" he apologizes, shaking his head as if shaking the offer away. Rose waits for disappointment to rise within her, but it doesn't come. "Sorry, that was silly of me. Silly old Doctor. This is where you belong."

"You definitely seemed to think so," Rose smiles. "Or, you know, past-you did."

"And he was right," he replies with a sad smile of his own. "There's much more for you here. A family, a job, and," his gaze conspicuously lingers on the other Doctor, "other things."

Rose's Doctor smirks.

"_And_," Amy's Doctor chirps excitedly, "a TARDIS of your very own. Makes sense, too. As if either of you would ever have enough pinned down to one measly planet."

Rose's Doctor glances at Rose. She doesn't see it.

"Well . . ." he tilts his head.

"Anyway, goodbyes and things," Amy's Doctor claps his hands together. "It's been fun, gang. Well, not entirely, but it was riveting. I will now procure a hug."

Swiftly, he moves towards Rose and envelops her into a big hug. She _oof_s in surprise, but quickly returns the gesture.

"Oh, I feel like we barely got any time!"

The Doctor leans out of the hug. "Wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

She laughs only half-comfortably.

Amy scurries up beside him, and her Doctor steps aside to allow her a goodbye.

"It was really nice to meet you, Rose," Amy opened her arms in a friendly manner, and Rose returns the hug.

"You too, Amy." She completes the hug, then nudges her head toward Amy's Doctor, who's busy examining the ship a bit reverently. "Take care of him?"

"It's not easy," she says mock-lamentably.

"Don't I know it," she grins.

"Take care of _yours_," Amy reminds her, glancing up as Rose's Doctor. If he was anything like the one she knew, he'd be a handful as well.

Rose nods, still smiling. She likes Amy. She likes her a lot.

Rory emerges beside Amy, and he nods cordially at Rose.

"Bye then, Rose," he says. "Nice meeting you."

"You too, Rory. Don't let the Doctor," she gestures at Amy playfully, "corrupt this one."

He laughs, and Rose thinks she hears him mutter something that sounds an awful like _too late for that._

Meanwhile, Amy's Doctor approaches Rose's Doctor. They offer each other small smiles. Amy's Doctor comes to stop in front of Rose's. They just stand there for a moment, gazing at each other. After a while, Amy's Doctor extends a hand.

Rose's Doctor looks down at the gesture, then back up at the Doctor. Both of their grins broaden, and they each instead opt to envelop each other in a hug.

"Aww, who would've thought, eh?" Amy's Doctor says once the hug has ended.

"Tell me about it," Rose's Doctor agrees. "You're brilliant, you are."

"As are you, Doctor," he replies respectfully. "And you better treat Rose Tyler well."

"Don't even act like you, of all people, would doubt that."

"Doctor!"

They both turn. Amy and Rory scuttle up to the Doctor they're less familiar with.

"Good to meet you!" Amy chirps, holding out her hand.

Again, Rose's Doctor rejects the handshake and hugs Amy, who accepts. Keeping the consistency, he then turns to hug Rory.

"You are both brilliant," he comments. "Absolutely, brilliant."

"We didn't do much," Rory shrugs. "Just ran around and listened to people."

"You'd be surprised at how many people don't even manage _that_," he says. "Rose and I, we're proper strangers to you, and you still—"

"Strangers!" Amy's Doctor interrupts in surprise.

"Nah, Doctor. We're proper mates now, I think," Amy proclaims.

This warrants another hug from Rose's Doctor. Rose, standing a little ways off, laughs at the display. This is the happiest goodbye she's had in a long time. Whoever had warned them of the possible explosion and allowed the time for the goodbye, she regretted she'd probably never get a chance to thank them for it.

The goodbye phase seems to end here. Amy's Doctor leads the group out of the ship with the new owner. Amy and Rory trot ahead of him to the doors of their more familiar transportation. They both turn to face the group one last time.

"Bye everyone!" Amy calls out with a wave. Rory waves meekly beside her.

Rose and her Doctor, standing side-by-side, wave back cheerfully. Amy's Doctor stands at Rose's other side, pausing for a moment.

He leans down slightly, muttering into Rose's ear just loudly enough for only her to hear.

"I know I took it back," he murmurs, "but it is up to you. If you want to come . . ."

He trails off, but Rose knows what he means. She looks up at him in surprise. He's not looking back, but he is waiting. She is his cue to leave.

A flood of memories comes rushing back to Rose. The moment she'd run off into time and space with him. The moment he'd burst into yellow and gold and a new man stood before. The moment she lost grip on a lever and let that new man fade away. The exhausting time she'd spent trying to find a way back to him.

But it hadn't been _him_.

She looks to her other side, where the other Doctor gazes up, smiling at Amy and Rory's face, truly fascinated by them and their presence here, however brief. They are leaving, but he could handle that. He has _her_.

But Rose notices the marginal clenching in his jaw, the small twitch in his upturned lips. He'd heard the other Doctor's offer, and now he is noting Rose's hesitation.

But he doesn't need to worry.

No, she isn't leaving.

Like someone had said earlier, this is Rose's Doctor.

"No, you go on," Rose tells Amy's Doctor, not bothering to lower her voice knowing full well of her Doctor's listening ear.

Amy's Doctor nods in acceptance. He lifts a hand to Rose's cheek, gazing at her as if drinking up her image for the last time. She lets him.

"Goodbye then, Rose Tyler," he says.

She smiles.

Amy's Doctor lowers her hand, and then trudges up to his ship, where Amy and Rory wait partially inside the entrance.

"Goodbye, both of you!" Amy's Doctor lifts a hand high into the air and sweeps it back and forth dramatically. He wants to add more than that, a final parting statement, but he doesn't think of something he deems good enough to act as their parting words. He eventually gives up, offering them one last smile, and then pulls the door of the TARDIS closed.

Amy, Rory, and the other Doctor disappear. Rose finds herself clutching at the Doctor's arm as the engine grinding starts up. The blue box's image fades and flares, fades and flares, and then fades permanently, the last echoes of the engine sound drifting into a silence.

Rose releases a breath she didn't know she was holding.

"Well, that was . . . eventful," the Doctor comments.

"Yeah," she chortles, a little breathless.

"You didn't go with him," the Doctor notes. "He offered."

"Why would I?" she asks, holding his arm tighter and looking up at him. She looks back, and they both grin broadly at each.

"We . . ." he trails off.

"We have a TARDIS!" she shrieks, hopping a little on the balls of her feet. "Well, I mean . . . you have a TARDIS. I don't. You don't have to . . . I don't even know if you want me to . . . it's not really fair of me to assume that—"

"Rose," he cuts her off gently, "don't be ridiculous."

She squeals excitedly, performing that hopping things again, and the Doctor's grin, somehow, widens at her enthusiasm.

"Okay, okay," Rose attempts to collect herself, "mum should be properly worried at this point. We should go home, tell them we're okay before she blows up or something."

"Rose," the Doctor says, "you know the really great thing about time machines?"

Rose throws her head back in laughter. Of course. She could be back in six seconds if she wanted to.

"Well, come on then!" she urges, sliding one of her hands into his and pulling him towards their new ship. The Doctor follows her lead, disappearing into the ship and kicking the door closed behind them, the universe seeming to have opened up before him.

* * *

**End of Part 1**

* * *

God bless you for keeping up with my flaky updating. I hope you've enjoyed part one. I think I mentioned earlier that I plan to make it a three-part shindig, so I hope you keep following this tale.


End file.
